The Lost Message
by hbndgirl
Summary: A burglary, strange messages, and a mysterious boy greet Nancy while she is on the Oregon coast. As she investigates all three, she finds an ominous thread connecting them - and that her investigation has put her and everyone she cares about most in grave danger.
1. A Handful of Mysteries

Chapter I: A Handful of Mysteries

"This hasn't been such a bad business trip, as far as business trips go, anyway," Carson Drew said as he sipped a glass of wine and looked out the window at the sun setting over the ocean.

"No," his eighteen-year-old daughter Nancy agreed, following his gaze. "I don't even mind that you dragged me along at the last minute."  
"You make a good secretary at a pinch," Carson teased her.

Nancy took on a mock-offended look. "Dad, it's 'administrative assistant'. You know Caley hates to be called a secretary. You'd probably upset her so much she'd be sick, if she wasn't already."

Carson shook his head. "I've never met anyone so touchy. Maybe I should hire you to be my full-time secretary, Nancy. It would be good way for you to save up for law school."

"Yeah, well, about that," Nancy said. "What makes you so sure I'm planning on going to law school?"

"Oh, being the daughter of one of the finest lawyers in the country, it seems natural that you'd want to follow in his footsteps," Carson kidded her.

"But then I'd have to give up my detective work," Nancy reminded him.

"Lawyers solve mysteries sometimes," Carson replied.

"Yeah, like how to do a week's worth of paperwork in one day, everyday, and still have time to go to court and consult clients," Nancy teased.

"Well, that's what I need a secretary for," Carson teased her back.

The father and daughter were very close and often bantered. This was partly because Kate Drew, Nancy's mother and Carson's wife, had died fifteen years before. Having experienced such a loss, both of them knew how fortunate they were to have the other.

Right now, they were in Troy, Oregon, a resort town on the Pacific coast, for a conference that Carson had been obliged to attend. The conference had ended that afternoon, but the Drews had decided to stay a couple more days for some extra R & R.

As their teasing took a lull, Nancy – who had built up quite a reputation for herself as an amateur detective – got the uneasy feeling that she was being watched. She casually scanned the room to try to decide whether someone was really watching or if her sleuthing instincts were just running amok.

Her survey of the room quickly revealed that there was indeed someone staring intently at her – a blond-haired boy whom she guessed to be about fifteen years old. He was sitting all alone, with a large plate of food in front of him. From the looks of things, he'd only been picking at it. When he saw Nancy look back at him, he looked startled and turned his attention to his plate. Even then, Nancy noticed that he wasn't doing much eating.

Carson noticed that Nancy seemed distracted by something. "Do you see a mystery?" he teased her.

"Of course," she replied lightly. Then she said more seriously, "There's a boy sitting across the room staring at me and barely eating his food."

"There's no mystery there," Carson said with a grin.

Nancy tilted her head to the side and shot him a look of good-humored annoyance. "This boy's probably only around fifteen."

Carson shrugged. "Fifteen-year-old boys notice girls, too. I'm sure that's all there is to it."

"I suppose so," Nancy conceded.

She and her dad had finished eating by that time, and they stood up. Carson suggested going down to the beach before it was time for bed, and Nancy agreed.

The beach was cool after the sun had set, and both the Drews breathed the sea air in deeply. Nancy waded out into the water, but only up to her knees since she hadn't changed into her swimsuit.

"I wish we had beaches like this back in River Heights," she said. "The little beaches that form alongside the Muskoka River are nothing compared to this."

Carson had to agree. "It is nice. I'm glad we decided to stay so that we can have a few days to enjoy it without having to listen to any speeches in between swims."

As Nancy stood in the water, gazing at the still-red horizon, she again got the uneasy feeling that someone was watching her. She looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see the boy from the hotel dining room standing on the beach, but there was no one there who seemed to be interested in her. With a puzzled wrinkle to her forehead, she turned back to the ocean.

Nancy woke up early the next morning. Glancing at the weather forecast on her phone, she saw that there was a good chance of rain later that day. Right now, though, the sky was clear and the newly-risen sun was making the water look too inviting to refuse. She hastily put on her swimming suit and hurried down to the beach for an early-morning swim.

After she had spent about fifteen minutes in the water, she climbed up on some rocks above the beach to admire the view. She sat there for a short time before she noticed a small stone holding down a piece of paper. Unable to resist her curiosity, she picked it up and read it:

 _If you find this, my name is Michael Hertz. I need help. Please help me. My gu_

"How strange," Nancy murmured aloud. She wondered if this was a prank of some kind, but something told her the plea for help was real. Who was Michael Hertz and why did he need help? Why was his note unfinished?

Forgetting the beautiful morning in the face of a new mystery, Nancy practically ran back to the hotel and went to the front desk.

"Excuse me," she said to the clerk there. "I was wondering if you have anyone by the name of Michael Hertz staying here."

"I'm afraid I'm not allowed to give that kind of information out," the clerk replied politely.

"It's just that I found something with his name on it, and I wanted to return it to him," Nancy said, truthfully enough.

"Oh, well, in that case, I can take care of it," the clerk told her, holding out his hand.

"So there is a Michael Hertz here," Nancy replied.

The clerk smiled ruefully. "You got that one out of me. Yes, there is a Michael Hertz here. However, I'll have to return his property to him, if there really is any."  
Nancy only smiled enigmatically and thanked him. Then she went back up to her room to change her clothes for breakfast.

While she and her father ate their morning meal, Nancy showed the message to Carson and told him how she had found it. She also told him what she had learned from the clerk.

"It's too bad you couldn't have gotten the room number for this Michael Hertz," Carson said. "This note could be a prank, of course, but I doubt that he would have signed his real name to it then."

"Unless someone else wrote it and put his name on it," Nancy suggested. "What do you think we should do? Should we go to the police?"

"It couldn't hurt," Carson agreed. "On the other hand, I'd feel a little silly if this did turn out to be a joke of some sort."

"In that case, let's talk to Michael Hertz before we bring the police in on it," Nancy said.

Carson grinned at her. "And how are you going to locate him?"

Nancy grinned back. "I'll find a way."

After breakfast, they began strolling around the hotel, listening for any kind of a clue. While they didn't find out anything about the mysterious Michael Hertz, they did learn something else interesting. A middle-aged couple were angrily arguing with the front desk clerk.

"I'm very sorry," the clerk said in obvious agitation, "but it's in our policy that we're not responsible for things like this."

"But it happened in your hotel," the woman insisted. "You're going to have to make restitution."

"We have it posted very clearly that we're not responsible for lost items that are not checked in at the front desk," the clerk explained, fidgeting his hands in nervousness and frustration.

Another woman who was professionally dressed strode up to the desk. "What's going on here?" she asked.

"Thank goodness," the clerk muttered before saying, "Mr. and Mrs. Foxe have lost several expensive pieces of jewelry and would like the hotel to make it up to them."

"Are you a manager?" Mr. Foxe demanded, turning to the newly-arrived woman.

"Yes," she told him. "My name is Carla. I'm an assistant manager here. I'll be more than happy to help you in any way I can, but the hotel cannot be held responsible for lost items that weren't checked in at the front desk."

"The jewels aren't lost," Mr. Foxe told her flatly. "They were stolen."

Rather than looking surprised, Carla let out a barely perceptible sigh and then pasted on a smile. "I'm sure that the jewels have only been mislaid and will turn up. I'll help you search for them."

"Someone broke into our room and stole them," Mrs. Foxe insisted.

"Excuse me," Nancy broke in. "There's been a burglary?"

"There's nothing to worry about," Carla hastened to assure her. "Just a misunderstanding."

"There certainly has been a burglary," Mr. Foxe said, ignoring Carla. "When we woke up this morning, my wife and I found over seventy-five thousand dollars worth of jewelry stolen from our room."

Carla and the desk clerk blanched when they heard the amount. For a few seconds, Carla stammered about, trying to find something to say to allay her customers' concerns. Before she could form any intelligible words, Nancy had already asked her next question.

"Have you called the police?"

"Obviously," Mr. Foxe replied in annoyance. "That was the first thing we did. They should be here any minute."

"Was there any evidence that someone had broken into your room?" Nancy asked.

"You mean other than my jewels having vanished into thin air?" Mrs. Foxe countered.

"Yes, besides that," Nancy replied patiently.

"Well, no," Mr. Foxe admitted. "The jewels were gone, but nothing else seemed to have been touched."

"Then the burglar knew exactly what he wanted and where to find it," Carson commented. "Were the jewels hidden or out in the open?"

"Hidden, of course," Mrs. Foxe told him. "I know better than to leave a small fortune lying about in the open."

"How long have you been staying here?" Nancy asked.

"Eight nights," Mr. Foxe said. "And I assure you we're not going to make it nine."

"Have you worn the jewelry, Mrs. Foxe?" Nancy continued. "Or did you tell anyone about it?"

"Of course I wore it," Mrs. Foxe replied. "Why else would I have brought it?"

"Then is there anyone you know of who could have found out where you had hidden it?" Carson asked.

"Not a soul," Mr. Foxe stated confidently.

"What about the cleaning staff?" Nancy persisted.

"Now, just wait right there," Carla interrupted, finding her voice at last. "Our entire staff is completely dependable. I'd stake my life on it that every single person is honest."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Nancy told her seriously. "Not only would you almost certainly lose that bet – and that's not one you want to lose – but exaggerating like that isn't going to impress the police when they get here."


	2. The Shakespearean Clue

_Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading and following! I would especially like to thank Cherylann Rivers and ulstergirl for your reviews on the first chapter._

* * *

Chapter II: The Shakespearean Clue

When the police arrived, they began a search of the Foxes' room. Mr. and Mrs. Foxe, along with Nancy, Carson, and the assistant manager Carla, waited out in the hall to see if they would find anything. Carla was nervously examining her fingernails.

"Nothing like this has ever happened at this hotel before," she insisted. "I just can't believe it. I don't believe it. The jewelry must simply have been misplaced."  
"I think the police ought to question the cleaning staff," Nancy said. "Especially the ones in charge of this floor."

"No," Carla groaned. "It wasn't any of our staff. I tell you, I'm not exaggerating when I say that they're all dependable, down to the last person."

"But you can't know all of them personally," Nancy protested. "Aren't there any who haven't been working here very long? Or maybe one of them who is normally honest is having such a hard time financially they couldn't resist when they found seventy-five thousand dollars worth of jewelry."

"How many pieces were there, anyway?" Carson asked the Foxes.

"Three, or four, I guess, technically," Mrs. Foxe told him. "They were a matched set of a necklace, a bracelet, and a pair of earrings. They had perfect amethysts set in solid silver."

"You said you've worn them while you've been here," Carla said. "Anyone could have seen them and then followed you back to your room."

"That might be possible," Nancy conceded. "It would still be easier for a staff member to have done it, though. They'd have a key and have the opportunity to learn where the jewelry was hidden before the theft."

Carla sighed and didn't reply. She clearly didn't like the idea. Nancy thought it a little strange. True, she could see that Carla wouldn't want the hotel to get a bad name if one of its staff turned out to be a thief. On the other hand, the hotel would get a much worse name if any more burglaries occurred and the hotel didn't cooperate with the police in the investigations.

As Nancy thought about this, she happened to glance down the hall. She was surprised to see the boy she had noticed the evening before in the dining room standing a little way down, staring at her again. On a hunch, Nancy walked toward him to talk to him.

When he saw her coming his way, the boy visibly jumped and scurried away down the hall.

"Wait!" Nancy called to him, quickening her own pace to catch up to him.

Reluctantly, the boy paused.

Nancy gave him a friendly smile. "Hi, my name's Nancy. What's yours?"

The boy gave no answer other than to continue to stare at her with an intent but sullen expression.

"Is your room on this floor?" Nancy asked, acting as if she hadn't noticed the boy's lack of a response.

The boy stared at her for a few more moments and then mumbled, " _Ich spreche kein englisch._ " Then he hurried to the nearby elevator and got on.

Disappointed, Nancy went back to the group gathered outside the Foxes' room.

"Was that kid a suspect?" Carla asked her eagerly.

"No," Nancy replied. "Anyway, I don't think so. I just wanted to find out if he was staying on this floor and if so, if he saw anything."

"Well?" Mr. Foxe said.

Nancy shook her head. "I didn't really get to talk to him. Dad, I guess there's nothing else we can really do here, and we've got a big day planned. Let's go."

When she and Carson were out of earshot of the rest of the group, Carson said, "Okay, Nancy, what's up? We don't have any definite plans today."  
"I know," Nancy replied. "I wanted to talk to you without the others listening. That kid's the same one from the dining room last night."

"That's not too surprising," Carson told her. "It just means that he's staying in the hotel, too."

"I did catch up to him and ask him what his name was and if his room was on this floor," Nancy continued. "He didn't reply, other than to tell me in German that he doesn't speak English. Dad, he wasn't telling the truth. He understood my questions just fine. I'm sure of it."

"Maybe he figured it wasn't any of your business and thought that that would be the easiest way to get away from you," Carson told her. "On the other hand, I should know by now that when you see a mystery in something, there's usually a mystery there."

"Three mysteries, actually," Nancy corrected him. "The burglary, the note, and the mysterious German boy."

"Well, the police are handling the burglary," Carson said, "so what say we keep working on that note? If it's for real, it might be the most urgent of all of them."

They decided to go back to their original plan of touring the hotel and seeing if they could find either Michael Hertz himself or some clue to him. As they walked, Nancy's phone rang.

Nancy looked at the screen, and then told Carson, "It's Ned," before answering it.

"Morning, Nance," the cheery voice of her boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, came over the line. "How's Oregon? Have you found any mysteries yet?"

"Well -" Nancy said.

Ned laughed. "I should have known. I hope you have time for one more."

"What do you mean?" Nancy asked.

"I got the weirdest email this morning," Ned told her. "It's addressed to you."

"But it was sent to you? That's strange."

"Yeah, but that's not the weirdest part. Let me read it to you. 'Nancy Drew; Go to the library in town and look at page ninety-one of _The Winter's Tale_. This isn't a prank. You've got to help me; you're the only one who can. M.H.'"

"M.H.?" Nancy repeated. "How weird. What email address was it sent from?"

"Let's see," Ned said. "Whoever it is doesn't want themselves to be known too bad. It's abcdefg . No name came up with it."

Nancy made a mental note of the address. "It doesn't tell us much, but at least it gives us a way to contact this person."

"Do you want me to go to the library and see what's there?" Ned asked.

"If you wouldn't mind, that would be great," Nancy replied. "It's only fair to warn you that it might be a wild goose chase, even if M.H. is for real."

"Why do you say that?" Ned asked.

"This is the second mysterious message asking for help I've come across from someone with the initials M.H." Nancy quickly explained about the note from Michael Hertz. "If my guess is right, the email probably meant the library here."

"Hmm. You're probably right," Ned agreed. "I'll check out the River Heights library anyway, though. Just in case."

"Thanks, Ned," Nancy said and ended the call.

She filled her dad in on the details of the conversation, and he nodded in interest.

"It certainly would be a weird coincidence," he agreed, "although the first message couldn't have been specifically meant for you. Hertz wouldn't have had any way of knowing that you'd be the one to find it."

"You've got a point there," Nancy said. "Another strange thing about this is that the email was sent to Ned. Why wasn't it sent to me?"

"Maybe we'll find the answers to both puzzles at the library," Carson replied. "Let's go."

It wasn't hard to find the Troy Public Library. Like most of the buildings in town, it was old-fashioned and picturesque. The large collection was divided onto two floors, with fiction being on the upper floor.

After several minutes of searching, Nancy located a copy of William Shakespeare's _The Winter's Tale_. She eagerly pulled it off the shelf and flipped through the pages to find page 91. To her surprise and disappointment, that page was missing.

"Someone tore it out," she told Carson. "See – it goes straight from page 90 to 93."

Carson looked at the little bit of the page that still remained in the book. "Either someone's playing a very elaborate joke or –" He didn't finish the thought. It didn't make sense.

"Whatever M.H. wanted us to find in this book must have been on the page itself, rather than just something that some tucked in," Nancy mused. "If someone wrote on the page, there's a chance they left an imprint of it on the next page. On the other hand, if they just wanted to call our attention to something that was already written in the book, we can find what's missing pretty easily by looking in another copy."

"Right," Carson agreed. "Let's check the book out and take it back to the hotel."

***l***

As soon as Ned got off the phone with Nancy, he grabbed his jacket and headed off to the River Heights library. He was hailed by a blond boy off about his age the minute he stepped in the door.

"Hey, Ned, have you come to relieve the boredom of a working man?" Dave Evans greeted him.

"You better talk quieter than that," Ned warned him.

Dave waved his hand. "There's no one around. I don't have to whisper when the library's empty."

"I meant you'd better not let your boss hear you complaining," Ned clarified.

"Fortunately, she's not around either," Dave replied with a carefree tone. "So, did you come to visit me or some book?"

"A book," Ned told him. "You've got a copy of _The Winter's Tale_ here, don't you?"

"Oh, sure," Dave said. "What do you want to read that for? Didn't you get enough of it when we read it in Mr. Barkley's high school English class?" He made a face at the memory.

Ned laughed. "That class was enough to almost make me not like reading – almost. Actually, I don't need to borrow the book. I just have to look at it for Nancy."

"Ah, I should have guessed," Dave replied. "A mystery. Did Shakespeare have some secret that he left clues to in his books?"

Laughing again, Ned told him about the email. After looking the book up in the library catalog, Dave was able to find it on the shelf quickly.

"What page did you say again?" he asked, opening the volume.

"Ninety-one," Ned replied.

Dave eagerly turned that pages until he had opened it to the one in question. There were no papers or anything that had been stuck between the pages. The two boys began to scan the page itself for some kind of message, but their search met with no results.

Dave closed the book and put it back on the shelf. "Looks like Nancy was right about the email meaning the library where she's at. It figures. Here we were, thinking we'd solve the mystery on our own, and the clue happens to be halfway across the country with Nancy."

Before Ned could respond to this, his phone began to play the ringtone he had set for Nancy and he answered it.

"Hi, Ned," Nancy said. "Do you happen to have a copy of _The Winter's Tale_ in your hands?"

"Within arm's reach," Ned told her. "Why? Didn't you find what you were looking for?"

"No, someone else did first," Nancy replied. "They ripped page 91 right out of the book. On the chance that the message was in the text of the story itself, could you take pictures of what's missing and send them to me?"

"Sure thing," Ned said. "What do you need?"

"Let me see." Nancy paused as she evidently looked in her book. "I'm missing everything from Act 4, Scene 4, line 682 to line 742."

"Okay, I'll have that to you in a minute," Ned told her.

After hanging up, he opened the camera on his phone and started snapping pictures of the pages in question. Then he texted them to Nancy.

"Well, I guess we haven't been completely useless," Dave said. "Hey, maybe we can still figure the puzzle out. What does the section Nancy wanted say?"

Ned held the book out and they both read through the lines. After reading through them twice, Dave shook his head.

"Well, I'm out of this one. I forgot how hard Shakespeare is to understand. It might as well be in Greek to me."

"It's not that bad," Ned protested, "but I've got to admit that I don't see anything here that could be a clue."


	3. Missing

_Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who is reading and following! Thank you especially to ulstergirl, Cherylann Rivers, Maria and TinDog for your reviews! I really appreciate your support and interest in my story!_

 _Just as a note, child abuse is mentioned on the next few chapters. It's only mentioned, but I thought I should give you a heads up anyway._

* * *

Chapter III: Missing

Nancy held _The Winter's Tale_ up underneath a bright lamp in her room. She tilted it from side to side, scrutinizing it carefully. Finally, she set it down.

"Nothing," she reported to Carson, who was sitting on her bed, watching her investigation. "If anything was written on the page, whoever did it didn't have a sharp enough pencil or press hard enough to leave an imprint on the next page."

"Then that just leaves what Ned sent us," Carson replied. "Although I don't see any hidden message in it."

Nancy picked up her phone and looked at the pictures again. "'I hold it the more knavery to conceal it,'"* she read. "Maybe that means that the person wants to reveal something that someone else is trying to keep secret."

"That hardly tells us anything helpful," Carson said.

Nancy sighed. "True." She read further in silence. "This is the scene where the Clown and the Shepherd are talking about telling the King about how they found Perdita as a child and so she's really no relative of theirs. I don't see how that has any bearing on anything."

"Me neither," Carson agreed. "Maybe we should try contacting M.H. at that email address again and telling him – or her – that the page was gone."

"Good idea," Nancy said.

She sat down at her laptop and typed out an email. Then she sent it to the address that Ned had given her. When she had finished, she got up and started pacing the room as she thought.

Carson laughed. "I don't think this is anything to worry about so much that you have to resort to pacing."

"But we've only got a few more days here," Nancy reminded him. "That doesn't –"

She broke off when she heard the sound of running footsteps going down the hall outside her room. It sounded like at least two people running, and the first thing that came to Nancy's mind was that someone was being chased.

She immediately darted to the door and opened it. She was just in time to see a man disappear around the corner. A sudden, sharp cry of fear came to her ears. Without spending another second thinking about it, she rushed out the door after the man. She heard Carson following her.

When they rounded the corner, they found the man threateningly standing in front of someone who had backed up against the wall. A moment later, Nancy was able to see the person's face – it was the boy from the dining room.

"What's going on here?" Carson demanded in an authoritative voice.

Instantly, the man backed away from the boy and assumed a pleasant expression as he looked at Carson and Nancy. "Why, nothing at all. We were just goofing around."

The boy was wide-eyed with either fear or uncertainty, or possibly both. Neither Carson nor Nancy were fooled by the man's words for a minute.

"Is that true?" Carson asked the boy.

"He doesn't speak English," the man hastened to explain. "You see, he's my nephew who's visiting from Germany."

Nancy gave the boy a reassuring look. "Can you really not understand English?"

Without moving his head, the boy's eyes darted to look at the man. Seeing that the man was staring at him intently, he didn't say a word.

"What's your name?" Carson asked the man.

"That's none of your business," the man replied. "Come on, kid, we've got to go."

"You don't have to go if you don't want to," Nancy told the boy. "If anyone has hurt you or threatened to, you can tell us." She punctuated the last statement with a stern glance at the man.

He tightened his jaw and his face reddened. "Nobody's hurt anybody."

He put his hand on the boy's back and shoved him to get him started walking in the opposite direction. As they went, the boy cast a pleading glance over his shoulder at Nancy and Carson.

"What do we do?" Nancy asked her father. "I don't buy that guy's story for a second."

"Neither do I," Carson replied. "I'll follow them and make sure they don't leave the hotel. You call the police."

Nancy nodded as she pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed the number.

***ND***

It was a typical lazy day in River Heights as George Fayne lounged on the couch in her house, fiddling with her computer. Her hope was to get it running faster, but she'd had no luck yet.

"If I could only get my hands on enough cash to buy a decent computer," she mumbled in annoyance.

In fact, the computer she had was practically state-of-the-art, but "practically" was never good enough for her when it came to electronics. She was constantly spending whatever money she had on the latest and greatest things, which meant that she usually had very little money on hand.

While she was working, the front door opened and her cousin Bess Marvin came in. Bess lived next door, and she and George were like sisters. They were constantly going back and forth between each other's houses without so much as knocking.

"George Fayne," Bess said in a mock serious tone. "I'm here to question you regarding a very serious crime."

"I've got an alibi," George replied.

"You don't even know when this crime took place," Bess reminded her.

"Doesn't matter," George said. "I'll think of an alibi. What am I suspected of anyway?"

"Dognapping," Bess told her. "Hannah hasn't seen Togo since early this morning and she's starting to get worried. You didn't happen to invite him home without telling anyone again, did you?"

Hannah Gruen was the Drews' housekeeper, and Togo was Nancy's dog. Because Bess and George were Nancy's best friends, it was only natural that Hannah would have called on Bess to help her locate the missing terrier.

"Nope," George replied. "Did you check with Ned?"

"Not yet," Bess said. "Hannah just called me. I thought I'd grab you first and then we'd go around the neighborhood and search."

"I'm kind of in the middle of something," George protested.

"George, I'm surprised at you," Bess said with feigned indignation. "Since when are your electronics more important that Togo?"

George made a face at her and then glanced at the clock on her computer screen. "It's only a little after eleven. If Hannah saw him this morning, he can only have been gone four hours, tops. There's nothing to panic over."

Bess grabbed George's arm and tried to pull her off the couch. "Come on. You don't want me to be the big hero while you just sit around on the couch. Besides, it's a beautiful day. Much too nice to spend staring at a computer screen."

"Oh, okay," George grumbled, closing her laptop. "I bet Togo's already home, though."

The girls headed off down the street on the short walk to the Drews' house. George insisted on stopping there first, just in case Togo had already come home. Hannah Gruen met them at the door.

"Have you found him yet?" she asked.

"No," Bess told her. "We haven't had time to start looking. Let's start by examining the scene of the crime."

George rolled her eyes. "You sound more like a private eye in some corny TV show than someone who's studied under Nancy."

Bess grinned. "When did you let Togo out this morning, Hannah?"

"Seven-thirty," Hannah replied. "He went down by the garage and started sniffing around in the tulips. That's the last I saw of him."

"Hmm. Well, I guess we'll start by looking there," Bess said.

"Seriously?" George asked. "Obviously, he's not there anymore, unless you think he got dragged underground by a gopher or something."

"You can never tell." Bess shrugged, pretending to be serious.

Unimpressed at having been dragged away from her electronics to play detective with Bess, George grumbled to whole way over to the flowerbeds. Bess, for her part, was enjoying the game, since she doubted that anything had actually happened to Togo.

"I should have brought a magnifying glass," she commented as she crouched down next to the pink and pale yellow flowers.

"Oh, come on." George rolled her eyes again. "Let's get this over with."

"You can't rush an investigation," Bess told her. "Besides it's good for you to think about something besides hardware and software and virusware and who-knows-what-kind-of-ware for a change."

With a defeated sigh, George bent over the flowers. "Well, he's not here and there are no squinty-eyed gophers in sight. Let's go look somewhere else."

"Wait," Bess said, pointing out a spot where the ground was disturbed. "It looks like he buried something here."

"That explains everything," George replied. "He's hiding from Hannah's wrath when she finds he's been digging in the flowers again."

Bess began brushing the dirt away with her hand. A few inches down, she found a bone from a roast and picked it up.

"Is it a clue, Sherlock?" George teased her.

"Elementary, my dear Watson," Bess joked back. "Actually, not so elementary. There's still fresh meat on this bone."

"So?" George asked. "Togo just wasn't hungry enough to eat it all."

"But that means he could have only gotten it maybe last night at the earliest," Bess said. "Hannah couldn't have given it to him – she wouldn't make a roast with Nancy and her dad away. Where did Togo get it?"

"Maybe one of the neighbors gave it to him," George suggested.

"Maybe," Bess conceded, although she didn't sound convinced. "Let's do some asking around and find out."

"I'm going to feel silly going around, knocking on people's doors to ask them if they gave a bone to a dog," George said, "but all right. Let's go."

As it turned out, though, none of the neighbors had given the bone to Togo nor had they seen him at all that day. Finally, there was only one house left nearby where they hadn't asked yet.

"Please tell me we're not going to go talk to Mrs. McClare," George begged.

Bess didn't look particularly pleased with the prospect either, but she steeled herself for the occasion. "We don't have a choice. Besides, if anyone would have seen anything, it would have been Mrs. McClare."

Lydia McClare was the classic nosy neighbor. She watched everything that happened in the neighborhood around her house and told everybody what she saw. Naturally, living so close the Drews, who always had something going on, was absolute smorgasbord for her and she kept an especial eye out for goings-on at their house.

It also meant she wasn't the most pleasant person in the world to talk to, especially knowing that every word said in the conversation would be repeated and exaggerated. That was why it was only with reluctance that Bess rang Mrs. McClare's doorbell.

The woman answered the ring at once. "Bess. George. How nice to see you. Won't you come in?"

"Actually, we just had a quick question," Bess replied.

"And then we have to go," George added hastily.

"We were wondering if you've seen Nancy's dog at all today," Bess said.

"Let me think," Mrs. McClare replied. "Oh, yes, I did see him early this morning. At about seven-thirty. He was digging in the flowers again."

"Did you happen to see which way he went?" Bess asked.

"No," Mrs. McClare told her. "That car parked in the driveway and blocked my view."

"What car?" George burst in.

"How should I know what car?" Mrs. McClare sounded as if she was trying to act annoyed, but was actually enjoying herself. "I assumed it was from the electric company. Anyway, the man got out, read the meter or something, and then got back in."

"What kind of electric company still sends people out to read meters?" George wondered. "Why not use digital ones the can send the info right to office?"

Bess's thoughts were on a totally different track. "Mrs. McClare, what did this man and his car look like?"

"The car was a little blue Ford sedan," the woman replied. "I didn't see the exact model. I didn't get a very good look at the man, either, since he kept his back to me. He was tall and big and had dark hair, though. He was much too big to be driving such a little car, come to think of it."

"Thanks, you've been a lot of help," Bess said hastily and practically pulled George away from the door.

"What difference does it make what the guy and his car looked like?" George asked once the door was closed and Mrs. McClare was safely out of earshot.

"I don't think he was from the electric company," Bess told her.

"I don't see why anyone would fake that," George protested. "I mean, people don't just go around reading meters for the fun of it."

"George, he wasn't reading the meter," Bess replied. "The Drews don't have an electric meter on their garage. This might sound crazy, but I think Togo was dognapped."

* * *

*William Shakespeare's _The Winter's Tale_ , 4.4.686


	4. Vending Machine Stakeout

_Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who has been reading and following! I'd like to especially thank TinDog, ulstergirl and Cherylann Rivers for your reviews on the last chapter!_

Chapter IV: Vending Machine Stakeout

Nancy was standing in the lobby of the hotel when two uniformed police officers came in. She hurried forward to meet them.

"Are you the one who called?" one of the officers, a young woman, asked.

"Yes. I'm Nancy Drew."

The woman held out her hand to shake Nancy's. "Officer Christie Wilson, and this is my partner, Len Greves."

"Not again," groaned the front desk clerk, who was the same one from earlier that day. "What did you call the police for? You should have come to us first. There hasn't been another burglary, has there?"

"No, nothing like that," Nancy told him. She looked at the officers. "Come on. Let's go somewhere a little more private to talk about this."

"Hold on," the desk clerk protested. "If there's been a crime committed in this hotel, the management has a right to know about it."

"True," Officer Greves agreed. "Would you call the manager and we could talk this over in his office."

A minute later, Carla arrived on the scene, obviously surprised and dismayed to find the police at the hotel again.

"I'm the assistant manager, Carla Reynolds," she introduced herself to the officers. "It's the general manager's day off. We can use his office to talk."

She led the way, and Nancy and the officers followed her. There were plenty of chairs in the office and they were all able to take a seat.

"Now, Ms. Drew, you reported a possible case of child abuse?" Officer Wilson said.

Carla looked shocked. "How horrible! The hotel will be more than happy to cooperate with an investigation into this."

"That's great," Officer Wilson told her. "To begin with, though, we need to know what exactly happened."

"My dad, Carson Drew, and I were in my room this morning," Nancy explained. "We heard what sounded like someone being chased, and then we heard someone cry out. We went to find out what was happening and found a man apparently threatening a boy who looked like he was about fifteen or so."

"Did you actually hear him threaten him?" Officer Greves asked.

"No," Nancy admitted. "We asked them what was going on, and the man seemed nervous. He claimed they were quote 'goofing around'. He refused to tell us his name and seemed to be in a hurry to get away from us."

"Did the boy say anything?" Officer Greves questioned.

"He certainly seemed like he wanted to," Nancy told the officers. "He seemed scared, though. The man with him claimed that the boy is from Germany and doesn't speak English, but I think he was following along with the conversation just fine. The man also claimed to be the boy's uncle. When they were leaving, the boy looked back at my dad and me like he was clearly asking us to help him."

Officer Wilson nodded. "There's definitely cause for concern there. Did you happen to see where they went?"

"No, but my dad is following them," Nancy said. "I can text him and ask him where they are."

"Good," Officer Greves replied. "Meanwhile, Ms. Reynolds, would you start trying to find out what room these people might be staying in?"

"Oh, certainly," Carla agreed readily. "I'll get right to it."

Meanwhile, Nancy had pulled out her phone and tapped out a message to Carson. He replied a moment later with, "Room 438."

"Dad's followed them to Room 438," Nancy told the officers. "Let's go."

"It doesn't look like you'll have to look the room number up after all. Come with us in case 438 needs unlocked," Officer Greves requested of Carla, as he and his partner followed Nancy to the elevators.

When they reached the fourth floor, they found Carson still waiting in the hallway, a short distance away from the room they were interested in. After introducing themselves to the lawyer, the two police officers went to the door and knocked on it.

"Police," Officer Wilson called.

There was no response from within the room. After knocking a few more times, Officer Wilson looked over her shoulder at Carla.

"Could you come unlock this door?" she asked.

Carla used her master keycard to open it, and she and officers went inside. Nancy and Carson followed right behind them. To their astonishment, the room was empty. There were no people nor any signs that a guest was currently staying in that room.

"I don't get it," Carson said, looking at the perfectly made beds and the well-dusted furniture. "I saw them come in here. I was out in the hall the whole time. They couldn't have gotten out without me seeing them."

"There's been some mistake here," Officer Greves commented. "Obviously, no one is here."

"But where could have they gone?" Carson asked.

"No need to panic," Officer Wilson told him kindly. "I doubt you made this up, and it's pretty unlikely that you made a mistake in the room. There must be some explanation."

"They didn't vanish into thin air," Officer Greves reminded his partner.

Nancy strode across the room to the window and examined it. It was on the eastern side of the hotel, which meant that it was facing away from the ocean. Even so, it had a nice view of the attractive resort town, and there was a deck where guests could sit and enjoy it. Nancy stepped out onto the deck.

Looking up and down the side of the hotel, she saw that all the rooms had decks like this one. They weren't very far apart from each other, and an agile person could climb from one to the next without too much difficulty.

"I think I found their escape route," Nancy told the others inside the room. "They could have climbed along here and gone into any of the rooms on this side of the hotel."

"Surely someone would have seen them, though, if they went very far at all," Carla said.

"That's right," Officer Greves agreed. "And since Mr. Drew didn't see them come out of any of the rooms, they've got to still be there."

"It's worth looking," Nancy said, "but they probably waited until we all came in here and then left."

Nevertheless, they began the tedious task of knocking on all the doors along that side of the hotel. Even in the rain, the occupants of most of them were out seeing the sights of Troy, and very few of the doors were opened. Carla unlocked the doors of the rooms where no one answered, but they were all empty.

"This is just disturbing," Carla said. "First that burglary, and now this. Everyone told me this job would be stressful, but I never expected anything like this."

"The deck doors are locked from the inside, right?" Nancy asked thoughtfully.

"That's right," Carla affirmed. "They can only be unlocked from the inside."

"So that means that, whichever room they went into, someone already inside it must have let them in or else the door was left unlocked," Nancy mused.

"Can we get a list of names of all the people staying in rooms on that side of the hallway?" Officer Wilson asked Carla.

"Oh sure," Carla replied. "I'll get it right away." She hurried off toward the elevator.

"I'll come with you," Officer Wilson said.

"These people are obviously trying to get away," Officer Greves commented. "That means they've probably already left the hotel. On the off-chance they stopped to get something out of their room and are still here, why don't the three of us go keep an eye on three of the doors, anyway."

Carson and Nancy readily agreed, and they followed Carla and Officer Wilson into the elevator headed for the first floor. Once on the ground floor, they split up and each of them went to one of the side doors of the hotel. There were still a couple of doors left unguarded.

Realizing that the suspect or suspects would turn around and head for another door if they spotted her, Nancy hid behind a convenient soda vending machine. She pulled a chair behind it as well, so that she could stand on the chair and look over the machine, hoping that no one would notice that they were being watched from this unexpected angle.

As it turned out, there was no one to notice. Not a single person walked past in ten minutes. Nevertheless, she continued her watch.

As time ticked by, Nancy began to get the same uneasy feeling of being watched that she'd had the evening before on the beach. She looked around her in every direction, but no one was in sight.

"This is one vacation that isn't helping me to relax," she told herself. "I must be pretty uptight to keep imagining stuff like this."

Even as she thought this, she couldn't quite convince herself that she was imagining things. She'd had to trust to her instincts enough times that she knew they were seldom wrong. Besides that, when they did steer her wrong, it was usually to lull her into believing she was safe when she wasn't, not fooling her into seeing danger when there was none.

Nancy was so deep in thought and tense that she jumped when her phone started ringing. The screen showed that it was Bess.

"Hi, Bess," Nancy said into the phone. "Say, I'm sorry, but this isn't a very good time –"

"Nancy," Bess interrupted her. "Something terrible happened. Togo's been dognapped."

"What?" Nancy asked, completely blown-away. "How do you know? When did this happen?"

"This morning at about seven-thirty," Bess explained. "Hannah let Togo out, and then Mrs. McClare saw a strange car pull up into your driveway. Nobody's seen Togo since."

"But nobody actually saw him get taken," Nancy said, her pulse calming down a little.

"Well, no," Bess admitted. "But you see, he'd buried a bone that still had some meat on it. Neither Hannah or any of the neighbors gave it to him. George and I thought it was weird that he wouldn't have eaten all the meat on it, and also we thought that if Togo had been dognapped, maybe someone put a tranquilizer in the meat and that made it taste funny so Togo didn't eat it all. So we took it to the drug store and asked them if they could find out."

"And?" Nancy asked as Bess paused.

"And nothing," Bess said. "They said that there wasn't any trace of a tranquilizer in it, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't one in it. They said that if someone had put a tranquilizer in it, they probably would have used a pellet and there wouldn't be any trace of it if Togo had already eaten it."

"So there's still no definite proof that anyone took him?" Nancy insisted.

"No, but he's been gone for hours and nobody's seen him," Bess replied. "If he doesn't turn up by tonight, maybe you'd better come home and look for him."

"Maybe," Nancy agreed. "Would you mind looking for him more? I'm sure Ned will help you. Definitely keep me posted. As for coming home, I don't know. I've got three mysteries here already."

"That doesn't surprise me," Bess said. "I'll call you the minute we find out anything. And I'll get Dave and Burt to help, too, the minute they get off work."

"They'll appreciate that." Nancy grinned faintly, although she was concerned. She was very fond of Togo and was worried and puzzled by his disappearance.

Just then, she heard the sound of footsteps coming toward her. She saw the man she was waiting for come around a corner. Immediately, she froze so that no movement on her part would catch his eye.

"Nancy? Are you still there?" Bess's voice came over the phone.

The sound was faint, but it was evidently loud enough to attract the man's attention. He stiffened and looked toward the source, seeing Nancy immediately. With an angry grunt, he jumped toward her. Before she could move, he snatched the chair from underneath her and in the same movement, hurled it at her.


	5. Threats

_Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who is reading! It means a lot to me. I'd like to especially thank everyone who has left reviews: Cherylann Rivers, TinDog, ulstergirl, and Maria._

* * *

Chapter V: Threats

As Nancy fell from the chair, she slammed her elbow painfully against the floor in an attempt to catch herself. She had no time to react before her assailant grabbed the chair and threw it at her. Most of the impact was on her shoulder, but one of the legs also hit her forehead.

Stunned, she fell back full-length on the floor. She closed her eyes, temporarily unable to think of anything but her head, shoulder, and elbow. Fortunately, her attacker ran rather than attempting to harm her further.

"Nancy? Are you okay? What's going on?" she heard Bess's voice coming faintly from her phone, which was lying next to her.

With a pained groan, Nancy reached for the phone and brought it closer to her mouth. "Yeah, I'm still here. I'll call you back later."

She ended the call, giving Bess no chance to protest or ask further what had happened. Nancy gave herself another minute or two to lie there and collect her wits. She had intended to get up on her own and go tell Officers Greves and Wilson what had happened to her, but before she could, one of the hotel staff found her.

"Omigosh!" the girl exclaimed. "What on earth happened? Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Nancy told her, not entirely truthfully.

She put on a determined smile and struggled to her feet, trying to hide the waves of pain that were pulsating through her head and elbow.

"What happened?" the girl asked again.

Nancy glanced back at the overturned chair. "I – uh, I fell off that chair. No big deal. Thanks for asking, though."

She hurried away, but as she went, she heard the girl calling, "But why were you standing on it?"

Nancy found her dad first of all. As soon as he saw her disheveled hair and clothes and the bruise forming on her forehead, he was concerned.

"What happened, Nancy?"

"I found the guy we were looking for." She sighed. "Unfortunately, he also found me. I didn't see which way he went, but it's not hard to guess that it was probably toward the door."

"Are you all right?" Carson asked. No matter what happened, Nancy was always his first priority.

Nancy nodded. "Yeah. We'd better go tell the police officers what happened."

As soon as they'd found Officers Wilson and Greves, Nancy told them what had happened and showed them the chair. Through bad luck – although now that her head was clearer, Nancy realized it was only to be expected – the housekeeper who had found her had set the chair upright and potentially ruined the fingerprints on it.

"Don't worry about that," Officer Wilson told Nancy when she had related this fear. "We can dust for prints anyway. It's not very likely that we'd get something conclusive, anyway, since dozens of people have probably touched that chair recently. Still, we'll try."

"Did you get the name of the guest registered in 438?" Carson asked.

"Yes and no," Officer Wilson said, shaking her head in confusion. "There's no one registered for that room. I don't see how those people could have gotten in there. I also got the names of all the guests registered in a room that they could have gotten into through the window. We'll start running them down as soon as we get back to the station."

"Say," Nancy said, a thought occurring to her. "Since those people could get into at least one room that they're not registered in, they could probably get into more. Maybe they're the burglars who broke into the Foxes' room."

"That could be," Officer Wilson agreed. "It's definitely worth looking into, since it would be an incredible coincidence that there are two groups of people running around with access to any room they want. On the other hand, there's still a very good chance that the burglar was one of the housekeeping staff, in which case he or she would obviously have access to the room. For now, though, you should go to your room and rest, Ms. Drew. You should also consider seeing a doctor."

"I don't think I need a doctor," Nancy protested, although she had to admit to herself that lying down sounded better than anything right now.

She excused herself and started heading back to her room. While she was in the elevator, her phone rang.

"Hi, Bess," she said into it.

"What happened, Nancy?" Bess demanded. "I've been waiting for ages for you to call back. Why haven't you?"

"It's only been ten minutes," Nancy reminded her. "Fifteen at the most."

"Well, that's a long time to be wondering what happened when you're on the phone one minute, and the next you hear a crash, and then your best friend comes on sounding half-dead and says she'll call you back and then doesn't."

Nancy smiled and told Bess what had interrupted their phone call.

"Whoa," Bess said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Nancy assured her. "I've had worse things happen to me than that."

"Well, yeah," Bess agreed, "but it doesn't matter how many times you've been hit over the head or almost died in a car crash – getting a chair thrown at you still hurts."

"I can't argue with you there," Nancy admitted. By now, she had reached the door of her room. She slid the keycard into the slot and opened the door. "I'll be fine, though. I'm just going to close my eyes for a moment and –" Suddenly, she caught sight of something in her room. "I'm going to have to call you back, Bess."

"Not agai-" but Nancy cut her off by hanging up.

An envelope was lying on Nancy's bed, and she knew that she hadn't left it there. She quickly looked around the room for any sign that the intruder who had left it was still there. After checking the closet (her room didn't have a deck), she decided that there was no place for someone to be hiding.

Since she had assured herself on that point, she turned her attention to the envelope itself. There was no name on it and it wasn't sealed. Nancy could see before she picked it up that it was bulging with whatever had been stuffed into it.

Being careful to touch only the edges of the envelope and its contents in case there were any fingerprints on them, she pulled the contents out. There was single piece of ordinary white computer paper with a typed message on it:

 _Don't go to the police. Don't even tell your father. You, your father, your friends are all being watched. Go home and stop interfering or more than just your dog will disappear._

The paper was wrapped around a stack of photographs. One showed Nancy in her bathing suit on the beach. The next was of her and her father in the hotel dining room. There were also candid shots of Ned, Bess, George, Hannah, Dave, George's boyfriend Burt Eddleton, and even Togo and Nancy's aunt Eloise, who lived in New York City.

Nancy looked at the photos in consternation. Whoever had sent them was serious enough to do a lot of research into Nancy's personal life as well as set up this surveillance in a very short amount of time. They also clearly had enough associates to have people in River Heights and New York doing surveillance.

This also seemed to confirm Bess's theory that Togo had been dognapped. The strange thing was that Togo had disappeared early that morning, which was before Nancy had even known there was anything to interfere with. For that matter, she hadn't been down to the beach since she had found M.H.'s message. That had also been before she'd done any detective work. Anyway, there hadn't been time since that morning for the culprit to find out so much about Nancy and set up this surveillance system.

So what was she being warned against interfering with?

***ND***

"I'm just going to close my eyes for a minute and –" Nancy's voice came over the phone. She stopped in mid-sentence and abruptly said, "I'm going to have to call you back, Bess."

"Not again!" Bess wailed, but the call had already been cut off.

"She had to hang up again?" George asked, seeing the look on Bess's face.

"She did," Bess replied. "One way or another, Nancy's mysteries are going to be the death of me. Even if I'm not involved in them, I'll probably die of suspense one of these times."

"Don't be silly," George told her. "People don't really die of suspense. Anyhow, I called the boys about helping us look for Togo. Ned's on his way over here, but Burt and Dave won't be able to come until later this afternoon when they get off work."

The two girls were sitting on the Drews' front porch, trying to decide how to handle a dognapping on their own.

"I don't think we're going to have much luck looking around here if Togo really got stolen," George continued. "It's too bad Mrs. McClare couldn't give us the license number of the car she saw. I mean, seriously. What good is a nosy neighbor if they don't notice the most important details?"

Bess nodded. "But she didn't notice. So how do we even start? Should we go to the police? Or do they have to wait twenty-four hours before they start investigating?"

"That's for missing people, Bess," George reminded her. "I don't know what their policy on dogs is, though. Do they have to have evidence that he was really stolen to do anything about it?"

Bess suddenly sat bolt upright in her chair. "I just had a horrible thought. What if that animal rights group picked Togo up? You know, Dignity for Animals. They have that big campaign against allowing animals to be outdoors unattended. Remember a couple months ago when they took that dog right out of those people's front yard and had it put down before the owners even had time to try to contact them?"

"That's right," George agreed, her face going a little pale. "They got into huge trouble for it, but they seemed more defiant about it than anything. I wouldn't put it past them to try it again."

As she was talking, she was looking up the phone number of the infamous animal shelter. She was dialing it when Ned drove up.

"Hi, Bess, George," he greeted them. "So what's the plan of action?"

"George is calling the DFA," Bess explained.

"You don't think they took Togo, do you?" Ned asked.

"I hope not," Bess replied fervently, "but it is possible. Maybe they won't tell us over the phone if they have him or not. Maybe we should go to the shelter in person."

"It's not a bad idea," Ned agreed. "They might –"

He was interrupted by a series of barks. He, Bess, and George all looked up just as a little terrier came bounding across the lawn and onto the porch.

"Togo!" Bess exclaimed, kneeling on the ground to try to hug him.

Togo was much too excited to hold still for that. He bounded around from one person to the next, jumping up on them and barking an enthusiastic greeting.

Hannah Gruen came running to the front door and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Togo. "Thank goodness he's safe."

"You little rascal," George scolded the dog playfully. "You've had us all worried sick. Where have you been?"

Togo finally held still long enough for Ned to pick him up. As Ned scratched his ears with one hand, he noticed something dangling from Togo's collar.

"Someone tied a message to him," Ned said, taking the piece of paper off the collar.

He unfolded it and read it:

 _Tell Nancy to be careful._


	6. Dilemma

_Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading and following! Thank you especially to Cherylann Rivers, TinDog, ulstergirl, and Maria for leaving reviews! Your feedback is both helpful and encouraging to me._

* * *

Chapter VI: Dilemma

Nancy sat on her bed, thinking until her head would have started aching even if it hadn't been already. She looked over the photographs that she had spread over the bed next to her. Clearly, whoever had sent them was trying to scare her into giving up a case. Half the plan had succeeded – the pictures were very disturbing to Nancy. She had no intention of giving up the case, though. In fact, threats against her family and friends made her all the more determined to solve it.

The question was what case was it? She had three: the burglary, M.H., and the German-speaking boy. There was Togo, too, of course, but it looked now that that case was tied up with one of the others. That is, at least one of the others. There was her theory that the burglary and the boy were connected.

As a matter of fact, Nancy reasoned, M.H. and the boy could be the same person. If M.H. stood for Michael Hertz, then he could certainly be the boy. Hertz was definitely a German name. Nancy wasn't sure if Michael was used very often in Germany, but it wasn't impossible by any means. Of course, the boy himself had claimed not to be able to speak English. If that was true, then he couldn't have possibly written either the note that Nancy had found or the email that had been sent to Ned.

How could have M.H. gotten Ned's email address and known the connection between Ned and Nancy? Nancy realized, naturally, that anyone with a computer or smartphone and an internet connection could learn more about Nancy than she liked. She tried to stay out of the news as much as possible, but she didn't always succeed. Ned could have easily been mentioned in one of those stories.

That still didn't answer the email address problem. Once, one of the girls from high school, Dierdre Shannon, who had never liked Nancy, had posted Nancy's phone number on the internet as a practical joke. Maybe someone had done the same thing to Ned, only with his email address instead of his phone number.

Then a thought struck Nancy. She grabbed her laptop and went to Emerson College's website. After a brief search through the various menus on the site, she found the page which listed all of the fraternities and sororities on campus. She clicked on the name of Omega Chi Epsilon Fraternity, and it brought up a page with all the pertinent contact information a student hoping to join would need. The list included the email address for the president of the fraternity – Ned Nickerson.

"That explains that," Nancy said to herself.

Even with one question answered, there were still more whirling around in Nancy's head. The biggest question right now was what to do? Nancy couldn't give up any of the cases now; she knew that much. She also knew she was going to have to be very careful. If someone was following everyone she cared about around with a camera, that same person could follow them with a gun.

The message that had come with the photos had warned her to go home and not tell the police or Carson why. She couldn't just ignore it, but maybe she could work around it. The first thing to do would be to lose whoever was tailing her.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her phone ringing. It was Ned this time.

"Can you talk now, Nancy?" he asked. "Bess said you sounded like you were busy."

"A little," Nancy admitted, "but I can talk. What's up? Any news about Togo?"

"There sure is," Ned told her. "And good news, too, for the most part."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Togo came back by himself," Ned explained. "The thing is, it looks like someone did take him, they held him for a little while, and then they let him go to deliver a message. It was tied to his collar."

"What does it say?" Nancy asked.

"It just says, 'Tell Nancy to be careful,'" Ned replied. "Does it have something to do with that email, you think?"

"Maybe," Nancy said. "I'm not sure." She paused, trying to decide whether she should tell Ned about the message or not. After a moment's contemplation, she decided against it. Right now, she needed to come up with a plan. If that plan included telling Ned everything, then there would be time later. "Listen, Ned, I'm really glad that Togo's back. I'm afraid there might be something more to all of this, though. Would you and the girls and maybe Burt and Dave do me a big favor?"

"Sure. Anything," Ned told her.

"Would you take turns having at least one of you stay with Hannah all the time?" Nancy asked. "It will only be till Friday at the latest. I don't know how things are going to go here, so it could even be sooner than that."

"No problem," Ned assured her. "And we'll keep an eye on Togo, too."

"Thanks, Ned. You're the greatest," Nancy said.

After she had hung up, she lay down on her bed and closed her eyes while she thought out her plan. It wasn't long before one began to form. She was just putting the finishing touches on it when her phone rang again.

"Hey, Nancy, how's your case coming?" she heard Joe Hardy's cheery voice over the line.

Joe and his brother Frank were, like Nancy, amateur detectives. Even though they didn't see each other often since Frank and Joe lived in Bayport on the East Coast while Nancy lived in the Midwest, they had been friends for years and had worked on several mysteries together.

"Hi, Joe," Nancy replied. "How did you know I was on a case?"

"My superior detective skills, of course," Joe said.

Nancy heard Frank's voice in the background. "Cut it out, Joe. Just let me talk to her."

"Nothing doing," Joe replied. "It was my brilliant deduction that led us to figure out what's going on."

"More like a lucky guess," Frank said.

"Um, guys, did you have something to tell me?" Nancy broke in.

"Oh, yeah, right," Joe replied. "We found something that belongs to you."

"In Bayport?" Nancy asked.

"Yeah," Joe told her. "We mail it back to you, except for two reasons. One, it'd cost an arm and a leg to mail something that big; and two, the police won't give him back."

"Him? What are you talking about?" Nancy inquired.

"Frank and I were just minding our own business, working on a case, and we noticed some creeper following us around, taking pictures," Joe said.

"Not you, too," Nancy groaned. "Wait, you said the police have him. You caught him then?"

"We sure did," Joe told her. "At first, we thought it had something to do with our case, but he just didn't fit in anywhere. After we caught him, we held onto him while we waited for the cops, and we asked him a few questions. Then I, with my brilliant powers of deduction and observation, realized that he didn't have anything to do with our case at all."

"He happened to mention your name to the guy, Nance," Frank spoke up. "The guy looked shaken up by that. We kept pressing him about it, and he finally admitted that he was hired to follow us around and take some pictures that would be sent to you as a threat."  
"Aw, Frank, I wanted to tell the part where I cracked the whole case," Joe said.

"I know," Frank replied. "You wouldn't be past the part about how brilliant you are yet."

"I wish you had cracked the whole case, Joe," Nancy commented. "Is that all the guy said? He didn't say who he was working for or anything?"

"Not a word," Frank told her. "The police are questioning them now. Joe and I can try to find out later if they learned anything."

"What's your case about, anyway, Nancy?" Joe asked.

Nancy sighed. "That's the problem. I honestly don't know. I've got three cases, but I don't see how or why anyone would be going to such lengths to scare me off of any of them."

"Well, let's hear 'em," Joe requested.

Both of the Hardys listened as Nancy told them about everything that had happened, including the photos she had received.

"I have a plan," she finished. "It won't give me a lot of time, but every minute it can buy me helps."

"Is there anything we can do?" Frank asked.

"Just let me know if the guy you caught talks," Nancy told him. "Anything at all, even just this guy's name, will help."

"Will do," Joe agreed. "Good luck."

After that, Nancy put stuffed the pictures back into the envelope, and then put them into her suitcase. Then she went to look for her father. She found him in the lobby, talking to Carla Reynolds and the desk clerk.

"How are you feeling, Nancy?" Carson asked her.

His daughter smiled faintly. "I've been worse. I need to talk to you about something, Dad."

"Sure," Carson replied, following her across the lobby.

"Dad, someone's been following us around and taking pictures without us knowing," Nancy explained in a low voice. "Not just us either. Hannah, Ned, Aunt Eloise, and my other friends. Even Frank and Joe. They even dognapped Togo for a few hours. They sent the pictures to me and said that unless I go home and don't tell the police what happened, then Togo won't be the only one to disappear. And I don't think they'll let anybody go a second time."

Carson listened grimly to this information. "It just doesn't make sense. They'd have to have people in four different cities. That's a lot of people and a lot of expense just to scare you off a case that you've barely even begun to investigate."

"I know," Nancy said. "There must be something much bigger involved here than just a burglary or child abuse."

"What if that kid was kidnapped?" Carson suggested.

"Maybe," Nancy agreed, "but still, why would they go to that kind of lengths even for that?"

Carson shook his head. "Who knows? Well, what do you want to do about it?"  
"I think we should make it look like we're going to leave," Nancy said. "We'll shake our stalker in the airport. Then we'll come back and check into a different hotel. It might buy us some time."

"Okay, we'll try it," Carson agreed. "It's risky, though."

"Well, we're together, and Frank and Joe know what's going on – at least, as much as we know – and then I'm going to call Ned and tell him to pass the word along to everyone else. I'll call Aunt Eloise, too, and tell her to see if she can either get a friend to stay with her or let her stay with them. As long as nobody's by themselves, we should all be fine."

Carson nodded. "Okay. What about the police? Are we going to keep them out of it?"

"I think it's better if we do," Nancy said.

***ND***

"Thanks, Miss Drew," Autumn Barry said to her high school English teacher. "I think I can finish the paper from here."

"I'm sure you can, Autumn," Eloise Drew told her. She glanced up at the clock on the wall. "I'm just sorry I kept you so long. Almost everyone must have gone home by now."

"Don't worry about that," Autumn assured her. "I'm the one that had a million questions. I'll see you tomorrow, Miss Drew."

After Autumn left, Eloise took several minutes to gather up her things to go home. When she got to the school parking lot, it was practically empty. Her small silver hybrid was parked a long way away from the school near the back of the parking lot.

She sighed, telling herself that she should try to get there earlier tomorrow so that she could park closer to the school. When she was about halfway across, she heard the sudden roar of a gunshot. A few feet in front of her, there was a puff of dirt and smoke as the bullet hit the pavement and then ricocheted off in another direction.

Eloise screamed and dropped her things, running toward the nearest car. She crouched down behind it, wondering why anyone would shoot at her and praying that they had gone away when their first shot missed.


	7. The Net Draws Tighter

_Author's Note: Thank you all so much for reading and following! I appreciate each and every one of you. I'd like to especially thank everyone who has left reviews: Cherylann Rivers, ulstergirl, TinDog, and Maria._

* * *

Chapter VII: The Net Draws Tighter

"There are too many people," Carson said to Nancy as they looked around the Troy airport. "We don't have any way to know who's tailing us, and so we won't be able to lose them."

"We'll just have to keep our eyes open and see if we keep noticing anyone everywhere we go," Nancy replied. "If we walk all over the airport, whoever it is will have to give themselves away to keep up with us."

As they walked, they paid careful attention to all the people around them. Not only did they wander apparently aimlessly, but they would also stop for several minutes at random. This way, they felt sure that they would be able to spot whoever was following them.

"By the way," Carson said after awhile, "the police tried to dust that chair for fingerprints."

"The one that got thrown at me?" Nancy said, though she already knew the answer. "What did they find? Several dozen sets of prints?"

"No, they didn't find a single print," Carson replied. "The chair was wiped clean."

"Really?" Nancy asked. "Why would have that guy bothered to come back and wipe his prints off? He must have done it pretty fast, too."

"It's strange," Carson agreed. "It wasn't worth the effort, either, unless the police would have recognized his prints. Otherwise, they wouldn't even be able to tell which ones were his and which belonged to someone else."  
"So we might be dealing with someone with a record," Nancy mused. "It narrows the possibilities a little, but not by very much."

"Especially given the word 'might' being in there," Carson said.

They began walking again, continuing to surreptitiously look around them as they did. A few minutes later, Carson's phone rang.

"Hello," he said, answering it. Then his face because grim as he listened to the person on the other end of the line. Although she couldn't make out any of the words, Nancy could hear that it was a woman's voice and she sounded very upset.

"But you're all right?" Carson asked, as the woman's voice paused. "Good. Yes. Okay, Ellie."

"Aunt Eloise?" Nancy asked, and Carson nodded.

Nancy was concerned. The voice she heard over the phone sounded excited and scared. That was completely unlike Carson's level-headed sister. Something terrible must have happened to upset her so much.

"All right," Carson said, interrupting Nancy's thoughts. "You just stay with your friend. Don't worry. Just do what the police told you. I'll talk it over with Nancy."

After a few more words of encouragement, he hung up. Nancy looked at him expectantly, but he didn't say anything.

"Well?" she asked finally. "What happened?"

"Someone shot at her," Carson said simply.

"What?" Nancy stared at him in horrified surprise. "How – Is she all right?"

"Yes. Yes, she is," Carson told her quickly. "Whoever it was fired one shot, but they missed. Nancy, it not a coincidence that you got those pictures and that threat only a few hours ago, and then this happened."

"No," Nancy agreed. "What do we do, Dad? I hate the thought of letting these people get away with this, but if investigating it is going to put Aunt Eloise and all my friends in danger…" She stopped.

"I know how you feel, Nancy," Carson said. "I feel the same way."

"I wish I had some kind of clue." Nancy sighed. "I wish I even knew which case these people are talking about. As bad a letting someone get away with trying to hurt Aunt Eloise and stalking all my friends is, I hate the idea of not helping the boy or M.H. even more. I know that boy is in serious trouble, at least."

Carson nodded. "Believe me, Nancy, I understand. That's why I don't think we should give up this easily."

"But what about Aunt Eloise and the others?" Nancy asked.

Carson sighed. "We're going to have to think this one out carefully."

***ND***

"I sure wish Nancy could stay on the phone long enough to tell us what's going on," Bess said, sitting on the Drews' porch swing with Togo.

"I sure wish you'd have told me that Togo was back before I came all the way over here," Burt Eddleton countered. "I need my sleep after a long, hard day at work."

"'A long, hard day'?" Dave snorted. "Since when is playing video games while you wait for people to come into that computer store hard work?"

"Besides, don't you like spending time with me?" George teased him.

"Okay, okay, two points for you guys." Burt backed down good-naturedly. "Still, all we're doing is sitting around on Nancy's porch when she's not even home, wondering what the heck is going on. And now Ned's not even around, either."

"He said he'd be right back," Bess reminded him. "I wonder what he's doing, though."

"Who cares?" George asked. "Why don't we try to figure out what's going on with Nancy?"

"How?" Bess replied. "Unless you've figured out some way of reading her mind."

"I've got a better way than that," George told her. "Reading Ned's email."

"Uh, George, first off, why? And secondly, are you sure Ned's going to be okay with that?" Dave asked.

George shrugged. "I just want to see that email he told us about. I can maybe trace where it came from."

She pulled out her smartphone and brought up the website that Ned used for his email. A moment later, she had gotten into his account.

"How did you do that?" Burt asked in amazement.

"Seriously, you guys, how many times have I told you, you need to change your passwords for your online accounts once in awhile," George replied. "You should also use things that are less predictable. I could get into any of your emails."

"Have you?" Dave asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well-" George said with a straight face.

"Okay," Dave replied. "Well, first thing I do when I get home is going to be changing all my passwords."

George cracked a small grin as she opened the one email that she was interested in. "Here we go," she said, taking a screenshot of the message.

"What are you going to do with it?" Bess asked.

"First, I'll try tracing the account," George told her. "Then I've got this sweet program that does writing style analyses. I'll put the message in that and see what comes up."

"Writing style analyses?" Dave shook his head. "What's that?"

"You would never know that you guys spend any time around Nancy," George said in mock disapproval. "You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she writes. It's not just they're handwriting, either. Their word choice, syntax, use or misuse of punctuation – it's all unique. You can identify that the same person wrote two messages, or be able to tell that they were written by different people. You can also tell some things about their education, age, gender, and where they grew up."

"Okay," Bess said. "That'll be helpful. At least we can learn a little bit about the mysterious M.H."

"We might even learn exactly who M.H. is," George told her.

"How can you do that?" Burt asked.

"My program can search through the entire internet for possible matches," George explained. "If M.H. is like any normal person living in the twenty-first century, there's some sample of his or her writing style on the internet. My software can find it."

"Well, then, what are we waiting for?" Burt asked, getting to his feet. "That sounds more interesting than just sitting around here."

All four of them walked the short distance to the Fayne house, Togo following along with them. As soon as they were inside, George grabbed her laptop and started the program on its analysis.

"Unfortunately, my computer is so slow that this could take hours to search the entire internet," George explained. "I've been meaning to get a faster laptop, but I haven't saved up the money yet."  
"What are you talking about, George?" Bess asked. "I've never even seen a computer as fast as yours. Any faster and you'll break the sound barrier."

"I don't think that's actually possible," Burt teased her.

Although the internet search for matching writing samples would take time, the analysis itself was quick. The computer indicated that the writer appeared to be young, male, and with an education level of a U.S. high school junior.

"That's pretty amazing," Dave commented. "How accurate is it?"

"I've tested it out quite a bit," George replied. "It's not always one hundred percent, but I'd say it's right at least ninety percent of the time. Of course, it's not even in the ballpark if the writer isn't completely fluent in the language they're writing in. Once –"

"Okay," Bess interrupted. "So now we just need to tell Nancy what we've found and see if it rings any bells for her."

Burt's phone buzzed as a text came in. "Ned's finally back," he reported after he'd read it. "At least, he's back at Nancy's house. We forgot to tell him where we were going."

A few minutes later, Ned himself entered the room. He looked serious when he did. After he had listened to George's excited explanation of what she had learned, he merely nodded.

"Great, George," he said. "Listen. This whole thing is getting pretty serious. I was talking to Nancy and she told me that her Aunt Eloise got shot at by a sniper."

There were gasps from all of his audience except Togo, who only cocked his head as if he could almost understand what was happening, but couldn't quite grasp it.

"She's fine," Ned hastened to assure them all, "but Nancy and her dad are pretty worried. Not just about Aunt Eloise, either." He told them about the photos and the threats that Nancy had gotten.

"So that's where you've been all this time," Dave said, after a few moments of letting the shocking and disturbing news sink in.

"Well, that's just creepy," Burt added to state the obvious.

"Nancy and Mr. Drew don't think any of us should be alone at any time, and that goes for Hannah and Aunt Eloise," Ned told them. "They wanted to know if we'd take turns staying with Hannah."

"Of course," Bess said, "but we're also going to get the police to keep an eye on all of us."

"No, we can't," Ned told her. "That was part of the threat – not to notify the police. For now, Nancy and Mr. Drew think we should cooperate that far."

"What about Aunt Eloise?" George asked. "She's over in New York by herself, and she's too much like Nancy to ask any of her friends there to help her. She wouldn't want to be a burden to them or whatever."

"That's why we're not giving her a choice in the matter," Ned replied. "Mr. Drew wants me and one of you two guys to go out there as soon as possible and stay with her. She won't turn us out in the streets, anyway, so Mr. Drew thinks it's the best way to make sure she's got someone looking out for her? Either of you guys willing to go?"

"You better go, Burt," Dave said. "You wouldn't have any more 'long, hard days' of work, then."

Burt shrugged. "Okay. I'll tell my boss that I've got an unexpected emergency that will keep me away for an indefinite amount of time. The worst he can do is fire me. Do you think we can get on a flight tonight?"

"No, I already checked," Ned told him. "There're a couple of empty seats on a flight first thing in the morning. You'd better hope you don't get fired – it's going to take the rest of the summer to earn enough to pay this ticket off."


	8. The Dark Web

_Author's Note: There appears to have been a glitch when I uploaded Chapter 7 which I am at a loss to understand, let alone explain. Essentially, it looks like the website has not recognized that I actually posted Chapter 7, even thought that chapter is most certainly up and running. If you missed it, be sure to read it before you read this one._

 _Once again, thank you to all of you awesome people who have been reading, following, and reviewing. You are all the greatest._

* * *

Chapter VIII: The Dark Web

"I don't think they're fooled," Carson said gloomily, looking out the window of the shabby hotel room where he and Nancy had registered to lie low.

"They won't be if you keep giving them a chance to spot you at the window," Nancy reminded him with an attempt at being funny. Her half-hearted smile faded and she added, "We might be taking a pointless risk staying here. We don't have a thing to work with. The German boy and his uncle have vanished, Michael Hertz hasn't surfaced anywhere, M.H. has replied even though I've sent three emails now, and the burglars haven't shown up again."

Carson let the window blind fall back into place as he turned around to look at his daughter. "You've got to remember that it's been less than twenty-four hours since the Foxes' jewelry was stolen. That doesn't leave much time for the burglar to attempt a second theft. Besides that, how would we know whether they did or not? We haven't seen a local newspaper yet this morning, and the police and everyone else we've talked to here thinks we went home last night."

"That's true," Nancy admitted. "I just feel helpless, I guess. I don't like it."

"Me neither," Carson agreed. "But instead of sitting around feeling helpless, let's go over what we know. Maybe there's something we can investigate."

Nancy took in a deep breath. She knew that turning over the clues would help her to feel less vulnerable.

"Michael Hertz and M.H. are probably both the same person," she began. "They have the same initials and they both seem to desperately need help. Hertz is a German name, so it's possible that he's the mysterious German boy. He certainly needs help."

Carson nodded. "That all adds up. It would also mean that he must know who you are, which would explain the staring the other night."  
"I thought you'd already explained that," Nancy teased him.

"Well, I've been wrong, once or twice," Carson admitted with a grin.

"Once or twice," Nancy repeated, shaking her head.

"Okay, okay," Carson said. "Let's get back to business. How could he know who you are?"

Nancy shrugged. "That one's not even hard. He must have found out about me on the internet. Unfortunately, you can learn anything you want on the internet."

"How did he recognize you, though?" Carson asked.

"He might have done an image search," Nancy replied. "My picture's been I the paper more often than I'd like."

"So did he just do image searches on all the guests at the hotel?" Carson persisted.

"Ah." Nancy bit her lip. "That's a good point. Why would have he looked me in particular up? If he's really in as bad a place as we think, he's probably not just checking out girls. Besides, if that was his reason, that would be kinda creepy."

"So he somehow already knew who you are," Carson concluded. "How could that be?"

Both pondered over this question for some time without thinking of a plausible answer. Finally, tired from concentrating, Nancy let her mind wander over every aspect of the German boy/M.H. case. Suddenly, she sat up straight before she even realized that she'd been slouching a little.

"Think of something?" Carson asked hopefully.

"Not about how Michael knew who I am," Nancy replied. "I was thinking about that chair that his uncle threw at me and how it was wiped clean."

"What about it?"

Nancy put her hands over her mouth and nose, folding them as if she was praying, while she put the final pieces of her thought together. "The uncle couldn't have wiped it clean. He was out of there. You don't make a successful, skin-of-your-teeth escape, and then come back two minutes later to get rid of evidence that may not even be that helpful to the police. That means there was another accomplice in the hotel. Someone who was on the scene in a hurry and who would happen to have a rag or something to wipe the chair down, not to mention that it would be helpful if they could be seen polishing the chair without arousing any suspicion."

"The maid," Carson said. "That makes sense. She could have given them a master keycard, which would explain how they were able to get into a room that didn't belong to them."

Nancy nodded enthusiastically. "She might have given it to them because they're the burglars, and she's getting a cut of it. Maybe she's even a regular member of the gang and specifically got the job to pull off thefts there. Michael doesn't approve, though, and wanted me to stop them. Hence the whole Shakespeare quote about it being knavery to keep a certain secret."

"It adds up," Carson agreed. "The only thing that doesn't add up is the threats."

Nancy's satisfied feeling of having fitted all the pieces together came crashing down. "Yeah. Small-time burglars wouldn't bother with something that elaborate. They'd be way better of just taking what they can and running."

"Still, that maid could very well be in on it, whatever 'it' is," Carson encouraged her. "We should talk to her."

"We'll have to find a way of doing that without totally giving away that we're still here, just in case whoever we're up against doesn't know that by some slim chance," Nancy said.

"We could play the game that these people are, and wait for her outside the hotel and stalk her until she's alone someplace," Carson kidded.

"What about an anonymous tip to the police?" Nancy asked. "It might not help us to catch the burglars, but if it lets the police do it, that's better than nothing."

Carson nodded. "Okay. We don't know the maid's name, though. I guess we'll just have to give a general description of her."

"She's blond, early or mid-twenties," Nancy said. "She had a little bit of an accent, now that I think of it. It wasn't very pronounced, though."

"How could an accent not be pronounced?" Carson asked with a grin.

Nancy groaned. "You know what I meant."

Carson placed the call, leaving Nancy to continue to think. She was interrupted in this task by her phone ringing. Frank Hardy's name showed up on the screen.

"Hi, Frank," she said. "Any luck with our mystery stalker?"

"Sure is," Frank replied, although his voice was tinged with grimness. "He broke down and told the cops everything he knew."

"That's great!" Nancy exulted. "Why do you sound so gloomy about it?"

"Because he didn't know much, and what he did know spells bad news," Frank told her.

Nancy heard Joe say in the background, "Come on, Frank. Nancy's got enough riddles to figure out without you giving her one more. Just tell her straight and get it over with."

Frank sounded like he took a deep breath. "The guy's name is Jarrod Durring. He was hired to follow Joe and me around and take pictures of us, possibly do something rougher to scare us if he got asked. He has no idea who hired him."

"How can that be?" Nancy asked. "There must be some indication."

"Nope," Frank told her. "Durring put his name out for hire for this kind of job over the Dark Web. That's how he was contacted. He was to be paid in installments as long as the job lasted, and he already got a down payment before he started. It was in coins and totally untraceable."

"You lost me back there somewhere," Nancy said. "What's the Dark Web and what are coins?"

"The Dark Web is a part of the internet that is difficult to access and impossible to trace who's been where or posted what," Frank explained. "It has its legitimate purposes, I guess. People who live in countries where the government censors the media can use it to access news and other information from the rest of the world that hasn't been filtered through the government or to let outsiders know what's really going on in their country, without having to worry about the government finding out. However, in this part of the world, it's far more often used by porn dealers, slave traders, smugglers, terrorists –"

"Terrorists?" Nancy repeated, catching her breath. She saw Carson pause in the middle of his conversation to look at her.

"Frank, I told you," Joe's voice came faintly over the phone. "If you don't want to start a panic, you should never, ever mention the T word."

"The point is," Frank went on, evidently ignoring his brother's interjection, "the Dark Web provides a way of committing crimes that we have no idea how to stop. And by 'we', I don't just mean Joe and me. Even the FBI doesn't know how to cope. As for a coin, it's a type of internet currency that's totally untraceable. Basically, it's the internet equivalent of paying in cash, only better because there are no serial numbers."

"So whoever is doing this is pretty hardcore," Nancy said. "I mean, this doesn't sound like something your average, everyday crook would know about."

"Not necessarily," Frank told her. "Even though it sounds like something straight out of a spy thriller, it doesn't have to be. Like I said, the Dark Web gets used by honest people for legitimate purposes every day. The concerning part is that it doesn't really matter whether you're after Moriarty or a pair of sitcom bank robbers. If they're using the Dark Web, the chances of catching them are pretty slim."

"Why haven't I heard of this before?" Nancy asked.

"Because fortunately there are still plenty of crooks who do things the old-fashioned way," Frank replied.

"Well, thanks for letting me know," Nancy said.

"Yeah," Frank told her. "I wish it could have been good news. Joe and I are tied up on a case of our own, but it's not a big deal. If you want us to help, just say the word."

"Thanks. There's not really anything more you can do, though. Not right now, anyway. I'll let you know if that changes." She hung up the phone and sat in silence for a few minutes.

"What was that I heard about terrorists?" asked Carson, who had completed his own call.

Nancy repeated what Frank had told her.

Carson whistled. "As if this whole thing wasn't giving be an eerie enough feeling already."

"I know what you mean," Nancy said. "It suddenly feels like I'm on the trail of something supernatural, even more so than any of the hauntings I've investigated."

Carson sighed and then shook himself. "Well, the police are looking into the maid. Do we have any other leads to go on?"

"There's our stalker," Nancy replied. "We could try to find out if anyone else checked into this hotel last night after we did. If so, they're probably the one we want. Nobody would stay in a roach motel like this if they didn't have a good reason."

"It's worth a shot," Carson agreed. "The stalker might not be actually staying in this hotel, but then again he might. We know that they're not infallible at least, since Frank and Joe were able to catch theirs. The only trouble is that the front desk clerk might not let us see the register."

"In a place like this, it shouldn't be too hard to find a way to get a look at it."


	9. Capture and Disappearance

_Author's Note: Because of the site-wide glitch that's been causing me issues plus finals, I decided to hold off on posting this chapter for a little while. Sorry about the delay. There shouldn't be this long of a wait between any more chapters. Anyway, in case you missed them, Chapters 7 and 8 are up. Please check them out before you read this chapter – things will make a lot more sense that way! As always, thank you to everyone who is reading, following, and/or reviewing! I really appreciate your support and feedback._

* * *

Chapter IX: Capture and Disappearance

Nancy waited out of the way while Carson went up to the front desk, pretending to be bristling with anger. The clerk was sitting behind the desk, his head resting on one hand while the other hand idly played with a smartphone. He didn't even look up when Carson approached.

"I want to make a complaint," Carson said.

The desk clerk looked up at him and yawned. "Breakfast is in the dining room. Over there." He jerked his thumb toward a doorway on the left. "If you don't like cold cereal, you're outta luck."

"It's not about the breakfast," Carson pretended to fume. "It's about the cockroaches. I've seen at least a dozen of them since I woke up."

The clerk shrugged. "Ask them to help you foot the bill," he joked.

Carson continued to scowl. "I want you to take a look at this."

"Later," the clerk said. "I'm busy."

"You don't look too busy to me," Carson replied. "I want you to come. Now."

From where Nancy stood mostly concealed, she had to admit that her dad did a pretty good job of playing the outraged customer. The desk clerk grumbled about it, but he followed Carson upstairs toward the two-bed room that the Drews' had rented the night before.

As soon as they were out of sight, Nancy hurried behind the front desk. She bit her lip as she was confronted with a computer. Without George's computer-hacking skills, she was at a loss what to do. After a moment's hesitation, she decided to see if the desk clerk was as incompetent at keeping passwords safe as he was at customer service. She searched the desk for anything that might be a password.

A moment later, she spotted a sticky note with the words "username" and "password" scrawled on them, along with those pieces of information. She typed them into the computer, and it immediately gave her access to the guest records. It only took her a second to scan the list and see that there had been one guest to check in only twenty minutes after the Drews had.

"Arthur Gib," Nancy read the name. "And they even gave him a room just down the hall from ours."

She quickly logged out of the computer and went back to her room. On the way, she met the desk clerk returning and still grumbling, but she casually took no notice of him. Once she was in the privacy of the Drews' room, she reported her findings to her father.

"You know, that wasn't the most legal thing to do," Carson couldn't help saying.

"I know, Dad," Nancy replied. "But it is the fastest way to catch that stalker, and the sooner we have a creeper off our tail, the better, as far as I'm concerned."

"Me too," Carson agreed. "Shall we confront him? There is a chance that Gib doesn't have anything to do with any of this, in which case I will feel very embarrassed to burst into his room and accuse him of being a stalker."

"No kidding," Nancy said. "But let's do it. The worst that could happen is that we get a severe chewing out from a stranger we'll never have to see again."

"There are worse things that could happen than that," Carson corrected her, "but we'll do it anyway."

They boldly went to the door where Arthur Gib was registered and knocked on the door. Fortunately, none of the rooms in the hotel had a peephole in the door, so there was no way for Gib to see who his callers were.

A man opened the door a crack with the chain still fastened. When he saw who had knocked, his eyes widened and he tried to slam the door closed. Before he could, Carson put his foot into the space. For a moment, they stood there with the man trying to push the door closed and Carson holding it open with his foot.

Then the man gave up the struggle and bolted back into the room. Carson reached through the partially opened doorway and undid the chain. Then he and Nancy burst into the room. The man had dashed to the window, evidently forgetting that he was on the second floor. Seeing that there was no way to escape, his shoulders drooped in a gesture of defeat and he stood where he was.

"Are you Arthur Gib?" Carson asked first of all. When the man nodded, Carson continued, "Why have you been followed my daughter and me around, taking pictures of us?"

Gib mumbled something unintelligible.

"Were you also the one who delivered those photos and the threat to me?" Nancy asked.

"Why should I tell you?" Gib asked, looking up at them.

Nancy and her father glanced at each other, the same thought going through both of their heads. There really wasn't any reason for Gib to tell them anything. They didn't dare go to the police with him, and they couldn't tie him up and keep him prisoner themselves. That meant that, no matter how this interview went, they were ultimately going to have to let him go. Gib didn't have to know that, though.

"If you talk, we just might not call the police," Nancy told him as a bluff.

Gib snorted. "As if. Maybe we can work some kind of deal, though. If you can get the cops to go easy on me, I'll tell you everything you want to know."

So he was taking it for granted that they would call the police. Nancy and Carson exchanged glances as if to tell each to play along.

"Keep talking," Carson said.

"I don't know about any threats," Gib told them. "I've been following you around and taking pictures, sure. But that's it. You've got to believe me."

"Were you also hired to shoot at us, if you were told to do so?" Nancy asked.

Gib swallowed hard. "They said it probably wouldn't come to that."

"Who said?" Carson demanded.

"The people who hired me," Gib replied. "I don't know who they are. Everything was over the internet."

"When were you hired?" Nancy asked.

"I don't remember exactly," Gib started to say. When he saw Carson's and Nancy's stern expressions, he continued, "Let me see. Must have been four days ago."

"Four days ago?" Nancy repeated in surprise. Four days ago, she hadn't had the slightest inkling that there was a case to be solved.

"Have you been spying on us all this time?" Carson asked.

Gib nodded. "Look. I haven't done anything wrong. I wasn't going to do anything to you, even if those people asked me to. You've got to believe me."

"All right. We believe you," Carson told him. "But you have done something wrong. We could still have you arrested. However, if you cooperate with us, we won't."

"I'll do anything," Gib said eagerly. "Anything at all."

"First, you're going to have to stop following us around," Carson told him. "If we so much as get the feeling that we're being watched, we'll give your name and home address to the police. Understood?"

Gib nodded. "Anything else?"

"Second, if the people who hired you contact you again, you are not to tell them anything about us catching onto you," Carson said. "You are also going to tell us what they wanted you to do. Got it?"

"Got it," Gib agreed.

"Finally, you are to give us proof by this evening that you've relocated to another part of the country," Carson continued. "Say, San Francisco. I want a screenshot of a hotel bill, a receipt from a taxi, and a picture of a bus ticket all with today's date and the proper times on them sent to me at this email address no later than eight o'clock, or you'll find yourself so busy running from the police that you won't have time to follow us." He handed a scrap of paper with an email written on it.

"Okay," Gib said. "I'll do it. Is that all?"

"That's all," Carson replied. "Now pack up and go. We'll watch to make sure you get out the door."

A few minutes later, Gib had checked out of the hotel. Nancy turned to look at her dad.

"Are you sure that was a good idea to let him go?" she asked.

"What else could we do?" Carson replied. "Of course, he can double-cross us easily, but I don't think he will. He certainly doesn't strike me as a professional."

"With our shadow gone, we can get out of this place and find out if the police learned anything about that maid," Nancy said.

It didn't take much argument to convince Carson to go along with this. When they arrived at the police station, Officer Greves came out to talk to them.

"I thought you'd already gone back to River Heights," Greves said with surprise.

"Not yet," Carson told him. Then he asked about the maid.

"So you were the one to call in the anonymous tip," Greves realized. "Why?"

"A personal reason," Nancy said hastily. "What about the maid?"

Greves gave her a searching look, but he didn't ask anything more about her "personal reasons". Instead, he answered her question. "We couldn't find her. We were able to get her name, at least, the name she was using. It turns out she was using a stolen ID when she was hired four weeks ago."

***ND***

"I'm starting to think you're right, George," Bess said as she sat on the Drews' couch. She, George, and Dave were all there, rather than taking turns one at a time.

"Of course I am," George replied. "What am I right about now?"

"That your computer is too slow," Bess told her. "How long is it going to take that writing style analysis thingy to figure out who wrote the email? You started the search yesterday."  
"It has to search the entire internet," George reminded her. "Then I've got to sort through all the matches it makes myself. After all, it's a pretty short sample. There's going to be a few thousand possible matches probably."

Bess stared at her. "You didn't tell us that before. It'll take forever to go through all of them."  
"Bess is right," Dave agreed. "I'm getting tired of just waiting around, looking over my shoulder. Isn't there anything more productive we can do?"

George shrugged. "You guys can think of things as well as I can."

All three of them fell into a gloomy silence. None of them liked the idea that they were being watched at all times by someone who might do them harm.

"I wish Aunt Eloise could have come here instead," Bess said finally. "Then Ned and Burt could still be here, and I'd feel safer."

"I'll protect you," Dave assured her.

George made a face. "Oh, please. Not so soon after breakfast."

"What about you asking Burt if he didn't like spending time with you?" Bess reminded her.

George mumbled something that the other two couldn't quite catch.

Dave stretched his arms. "You know what we need. We need to get our minds off of this for a little while. Why don't we watch a movie while George's computer does whatever it's doing?"

"At eleven in the morning?" Bess asked.

"Why not?" Dave replied.

There was a debate over what movie to watch, since Bess wanted to watch something light and romantic, while Dave and George wanted to watch an action movie. Finally, Dave acquiesced to Bess's wishes. George held out, but finally Bess won by simply plugging in a DVD before George could stop her.

"It's not like we're going to have much else to do," Bess philosophized. "We can watch your movie later."

The movie was halfway over when the Drews' landline rang. Hannah came into the family room nervously.

"What if it's those people?" she asked.

There was no need to ask what people. The three teenagers looked at each other and then George scooped up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Please, tell Nancy 'see more'," a soft male voice came over the line. "She has to keep trying to help."


	10. See More

_Author's Note: As you're all no doubt aware by this time, there's been a bug going around the site for awhile now that prevents notifications from being sent out. Because of this, you might have missed the last few chapters. If you did, be sure to read them before moving on to this one._

 _Thank you to everybody for continuing to read, follow, and especially review! You don't know how much your support means to me._

* * *

Chapter X: See More

"Hello? Who is this?" George asked for the third time. There was still no answer. Finally, she hung up the phone.

"Who was it?" Bess had a worried look on her face. "Was it the – whoever they are?"

"Was it another threat?" Dave helped her out.

"No," George informed them. "It was a guy. He talked very, very quietly. All he said was, 'Tell Nancy "see more". She has to keep trying to help.' Then he hung up."

"I don't know how much more of this I can take," Hannah said. "Threats, stalkers, strange messages, snipers. What will be next?"

"I don't want to think about it," Bess replied. "I guess we'd better tell Nancy. What else can we do?"

"The message doesn't make any sense," Dave commented. "See more of what? If whoever that was needs help, he should just say what he needs plainly."

"Maybe it was Nancy's mystery M.H.," Bess suggested.

"Or maybe it was a practical joker with really bad timing," Dave added.

"There's one way of finding that out," George said.

She pressed the button on the phone to look at the caller ID and then hit the dial button. The phone rang several times before a generic answering machine said, "The number you have dialed has a voice message box that has not been set up. Sorry for any inconvenience."

George hung up. "No information there. At least, no name. We could get the general area where the phone is from the area code and prefix."

She grabbed her laptop and did a quick search. "Seattle, Washington," she said triumphantly.

"Well, that narrows it down to a few hundred thousand people." Dave grinned.

"Oh, right," George replied. "It's better than nothing anyway. Let's tell Nancy what we've got."

***ND***

"'See more'," Nancy repeated as she hung up the phone from talking to George. "Seattle."

"What now?" Carson asked her.

They were back in their dismal hotel room, Carson sitting on his bed. Nancy was perched uncomfortably on the edge of a chair that gave her an uneasy feeling that if she sat too far back in it, something alive might reach out of the cushions.

She explained George's message. "Was it M.H. or Michael Hertz or the German boy? Or was it all three of them because they're all the same person? And what could it possibly mean?"

"That's a tough one," Carson agreed. "Maybe it means that you need to look at the big picture more."

"I barely have a little picture to look at," Nancy protested.

"There is your theory that all the cases are connected," Carson reminded her. "Maybe that's what he meant."

"It could be," Nancy agreed. "I'm still stumped as to how they could be connected though."

They fell silent as they both turned over the different possibilities in their heads. As often happened, while Nancy thought, her mind wandered around for a little while until it zeroed in on the one thing that was really bothering her most.

"Dad," she said, "Arthur Gib was hired four days ago to spy on us. Why? It was only yesterday morning that all of these cases dropped out of the sky on me. Why would someone want to scare me off a case I wasn't even working on?"

"It's a good question," Carson agreed. "It fits right in with the rest of this case – it doesn't make any sense."

"Four days ago, the convention was still going on," Nancy mused. "Could it have something to do with that? But what?"

Carson shook his head in complete bafflement. At a loss for what else to do, he glanced at his watch and saw that it was nearly lunchtime. An odd look crossed over his face.

"When were the boys supposed to get into New York?" he asked.

"About ten," Nancy replied, the significance not sinking in right away.

"In what time zone?" Carson continued.

"I guess Central Time," Nancy told him, beginning to see where he was going. "Which was eight Pacific Time, which is what we're in now. That means they were supposed to be there almost four hours ago. Why haven't they called?"

Without waiting for her dad to respond, she put in a call to Ned's phone. He didn't answer. Anxiously, she tried Burt's phone and then Aunt Eloise's, both with the same result.

"Something must have happened to them," she said, her heart seeming to stop.

***ND***

Hours earlier, Ned and Burt had been crammed uncomfortably into a packed plane. Since they had had to take the last two available seats, naturally those seats weren't next to each other. That meant that they couldn't spend their travel time discussing plans or theories.

That's what Burt would have much rather done. As it was, he was obliged to sit in a middle seat between a nervous middle-aged man who made no secret of his claustrophobia and his fear of flying and a young blond woman who wouldn't stop talking. To make matters worse, she seemed to think herself hilarious and was constantly laughing the most annoying, snorty laugh that Burt had ever heard.

Ned had it better. He was at least on an aisle and the person sitting next to him was an elderly woman who promptly fell asleep as soon as the plane took off. Next to her, by the window, was a woman of around thirty who spent all her time reading and scarcely even looked up once during the entire flight. That left plenty of time for Ned to think.

Since he and Burt had, at the last minute, gotten the last two seats on the plane, it seemed unlikely that anyone had followed them aboard the plane. That was a relief. At least they'd have a couple of hours without being watched. Naturally, though, they would probably pick up another tail the minute they landed. At any rate, they'd doubtless get to share Aunt Eloise's with her.

In the middle of Ned's reflections, he felt someone's hand touch his shoulder. He jumped in surprise and looked up, but it was just Burt.

"Hey, you shouldn't clog up the whole aisle," Ned told him.

"I had to get away from those people," Burt said. "Ugh. The guy keeps freaking out every time the plane jerks even a little, and that girl. Oh, boy. I'm pretty sure she's going to ask for my phone number before this is all over. It's not safe over there."

"So in other words, George doesn't have any competition," Ned replied.

"Oh, please." Burt rolled his eyes. "Her giggling is probably the reason why that guy's nerves are shot."

"Never mind," Ned said. "We'll land in less than an hour and then you'll never have to see her again. Now you'd better get out of the middle of the aisle before somebody needs to get past."

Reluctantly, Burt returned to his seat. He got a small amount of comfort from the fact that the girl was talking to the nervous man with just as much enthusiasm as she had shown in talking to Burt. Maybe she wasn't so interested after all. It didn't make her nasally laugh any less annoying, though.

When the plane landed and everyone had disembarked, Ned and Burt began looking for Aunt Eloise. She didn't seem to be anywhere around.

"I hope nothing more has happened to her," Ned said with a frown.

Burt groaned. "Something's about to happen to us. Or me, anyway."

Ned glanced in the direction that Burt was looking and saw a young woman coming toward them looking straight at Burt.

"The girl from the plane?" Ned asked.

Burt nodded. "Let's get out of here."

He didn't move fast enough, though. The girl caught up to them and greeted him like an old friend.

"Where are you going?" she asked. "Oh, maybe if we're going to the same neighborhood, maybe we can share a taxi partway."

"I don't think that'll be helpful," Burt said hurriedly.

Ned thought watching Burt squirm further might be funny, but there was no time now. He was still worried about Aunt Eloise.

"We've got to meet someone," he said. "Come on, Burt."

"She's right over there." Burt pointed Nancy's aunt out with relief, both that she was there and at an excuse to get away from the girl.

"Ned. Burt," Aunt Eloise greeted them when they were close enough. "Thanks for coming all the way out here."

"No problem," Ned assured her. "It's not the first time Nancy or her dad have asked us to make an emergency plane trip somewhere."

Aunt Eloise smiled faintly. "I have to admit, this whole thing has me shaken up. I don't know that it was necessary for Carson to ask you guys to go to all this trouble, though."

"He and Nancy think that it's important to keep this whole thing as quiet as they can and involve as few outside people as possible," Ned explained.

"Gosh, sounds like a spy thriller," a feminine voice said from behind them.

Burt, Ned, and Aunt Eloise looked in surprise at the speaker, who was the same young woman from the plane. Burt closed his eyes as he tried to think how to deal with this.

The girl looked almost apologetic. "Did you not want me to overhear? If this is so hush-hush, maybe you shouldn't talk about it in an airport."

"Uh, well," Ned said. "I guess it's not the end of the world that you overheard. Just don't mention it to anyone. It's very important."

The girl nodded and put her finger over her lips. "I won't say a word," she whispered. Then she said louder, looking at Burt, "I was just wondering if I could get your phone number."

"Um, I," Burt stammered around.

Ned broke in for him, "You might want to ask his girlfriend about that, too."

The girl's face fell. "Girlfriend? Figures. All the cute guys are always taken." Then she looked at Ned. "What about you?"  
"I'm taken too," Ned told her.

The girl sighed, but then immediately afterward gave a nasally laugh. "Oh well. My vacation's just starting. There's plenty of time. I'll see you guys later."

"I hope not," Burt muttered under his breath as she walked away.

"She certainly moved fast," Ned said. "Did she even tell you her name?"

"Nope," Burt replied. "Never mind. We've got more important things to think about right now. Let's head back to your apartment, Aunt Eloise."

As they climbed into Aunt Eloise's car when they got to the parking area, they began talking more in earnest about the events of the last couple days.

"It's too creepy," Aunt Eloise said with a shudder.

"What did the police say about the sniper?" Ned asked.

"They didn't have any reason to think it was a personal attack," Aunt Eloise told him. "With all the school shootings that have happened in the past few years, unfortunately it's not that uncommon a thing to happen anymore."

"Aw, man, wouldn't it be the weirdest thing ever if it didn't have anything to do with Nancy's case?" Burt asked. "I mean, it could be a coincidence."

Ned shook his head. "It's possible, but I doubt it. Speaking of Nancy, though, I need to call her and tell we're here."

He reached into his pocket for his phone and a strange look crossed his face. Then he began searching all of his pockets.

"My phone's gone," he said finally.

"Maybe you put it in your carry-on by mistake," Aunt Eloise suggested. "We'd better look."

While she and Ned were opening the trunk, Burt began searching his own pockets. Finally, he opened his door and told them, "My phone's gone, too."

Aunt Eloise opened her purse and went through all the contents thoroughly. "So is mine."

All three exchanged confused looks. Somehow, someone had managed to steal all their phones without them realizing it.


	11. MH

_Author's Note: Thank you all so much for reading, following, and reviewing! I really appreciate your support!_

* * *

Chapter XI: M.H.

"This is ridiculous," Burt moaned as he folded his arms on the top of Aunt Eloise's car and buried his face in them. "It seriously doesn't make sense anymore."

"It stopped making sense a long time ago," Ned reminded him. "At least it seems like a long time ago. Why would anyone bother to steal our phones?"

Aunt Eloise shook her head. "I don't know. This is the last straw, though. We need to go to the police and get protection."

"We can't," Ned replied. "If they're following us this close, they'd know the minute we got in touch with the police. The cops wouldn't have a chance to get to us in time."

"What are we going to do then?" Aunt Eloise asked. "We can't just let ourselves be followed around by these people. Who knows when they might decide to start shooting again?"

Burt suddenly popped his head up and snapped his fingers. "That girl."

"What?" Ned asked.

"That girl from the plane," Burt said. "She must have taken the phones. She was following us around, waiting for a chance to get all three of our phones. She probably grabbed my phone while we were getting off the plane, Ned's when she came up to us the first time, and Aunt Eloise's while she was walking away that second time."

"She would have had the opportunity," Ned admitted, "but she wouldn't have had the motive unless she's tied up with Nancy's case. I don't see how she could be. We took the last two seats on the plane. That means she would have had to book a seat before we even knew we were coming here."

"Maybe she did," Burt suggested.

"But why?" Aunt Eloise asked in bewilderment.

"Well, whoever's behind this knew all about the sniper and everything before it happened, obviously," Burt explained. "What if they also knew what Nancy and her dad would do about it? They can't go to the police; there's no one in New York who can help. What would be the obvious thing for them to do if they can't come themselves? Send one of us, of course. That would also explain why she had the seat next to me. She booked an extra seat on that plane next to hers, and then cancelled it at the last minute to make sure whoever Nancy sent would be able to get on that flight. Maybe she didn't realize Nancy would send two of us."

"That's some idea," Ned admitted. "There's one big problem, though. Why? Why would anyone go to all that trouble?" He paused and took a breath. "Unless – unless this is some master plan against Nancy or maybe her dad."

"I'll bet that's it," Burt agreed excitedly. "There are probably hundreds of people out there who want revenge on Nancy, her dad, or both of them."

"A psychopath bent on revenge," Ned mused. "I don't know. How often do things like that happen in real life?"

"Who cares?" Burt asked. "It's a possibility, even if it practically never happens. I mean, your chances of getting hit by lightning or killed by a shark are pretty slim, too, but they still happen."

"Okay," Ned acceded. "We can at least try to find out about that girl. Maybe she hasn't left the airport yet. We could look for her at the baggage carousels."

They didn't dare split up, partly because they had no phones to make it easier to find each other again and partly because none of them wanted to be alone with a sniper at large. This made it take more than an hour to search through the entire baggage claim area. Before they'd finished the task, they were all getting tired.

"I doubt she would have stuck around this long, no matter who she is," Burt said finally. "Let's just go on to Aunt Eloise's apartment."

"We spent this much time; we might as well finish," Aunt Eloise replied doggedly.

Ned was the tallest in the group and was able to see through the crowd better than the others. As he was looking around, a familiar head of blond hair caught his eye.

"That could be her," he told his companions.

The three of them made their way through the crowd as quickly as they could. Fortunately, the girl seemed to be absorbed in her phone and didn't notice them until they were at her side.

"Excuse me," Ned said to her.

She looked up at him and smiled. "Oh, it's you again. I thought you'd be back."

"You did?" Ned asked.

The girl nodded and held out her phone so that Ned could see the screen. There was a picture of Nancy on it.

"What is this?" Ned took the phone from her and then he realized it was his own phone. "What are you trying to do?"

"I'm trying to help you," the girl replied. "Your girlfriend has opened up a bigger can of worms than she bargained for. I know all about it, and I'll tell you. For a price."

Her listeners exchanged glances.

"How can you know all about it unless you're in on it?" Ned asked. "And if that's the case, why would you tell us, even for a price."

"'I hold it the more knavery to conceal it,'"* the girl told him.

"Huh?" Burt asked.

Ned rolled his eyes. "It's from _The Winter's Tale_ – the lines that were missing out of the library book, I think. Were you the one who left that clue?"

"Good memory," the girl said. "Yes, I am. I'm M.H., but I don't particularly want to make any more revelations right here with thousands of people around us, most of whom don't care except for the one that carries a gun and really, really doesn't want me to tell you what I've got to say."

"Okay," Ned agreed. "Let's go to one of the cafes here to talk. It will be a little more private, but not too private."

The others agreed and they found a small one with a nice, secluded back corner.

"Mind if I take my phone back, too?" Burt asked as they sat down.

"Oh sure." M.H. handed the phone back to him, and then returned Aunt Eloise's to her.

"What was with that, anyway?" Ned asked. "If you wanted to talk to us, why did you have to go through all these theatrics?"  
M.H. sighed. "A test, I guess. And also I wanted to show you that I'm an accomplished pickpocket and hacker, among other things. My story will make a lot more sense if you know that. Oh, by the way, Ned, you should really pick a more secure pin for your phone. The year you met Nancy is totally predictable."

"George said that M.H. was probably a high school boy," Burt commented.

"Well, George is wrong there," M.H. replied. "My name's Mandy Hoover, by the way."

"Not to seem overly suspicious," Ned said, "but do you have any proof of that?"

Mandy took a driver's license from her purse and handed it to Ned. It was issued to Amanda Hoover of Boston and the picture on it certainly looked like the same girl. Ned handed it back.

"All right," he said. "Now how about you start explaining."

"Well," Mandy replied. "Like I said, I'm a pickpocket, hacker, burglar, et cetera. I take gigs for people, mostly. That way I definitely get paid and I don't have to worry about what to do with the stuff I take. My last job didn't quite go the way I wanted it to. See, I got hired to snatch some jewels from these rich people at a resort in Oregon. Just a simple, basic burglary. Seemed pretty Mickey Mouse."

"You're certainly calm about telling us this," Aunt Eloise commented.

"Aren't I, though?" Mandy laughed her nasally laugh. "I know I'm not going to get arrested. The government is totally going to give me amnesty if I turn over what I know to them. Heck, they'll probably give me immunity against future crimes, too. Wouldn't that be something?"

Ned wasn't enjoying making Mandy's acquaintance. "Just keep going with your story."

"Right, well," Mandy said. "So it was basic. Except then I learned two things that gave me cold feet about the whole job. One was that Nancy Drew was staying at the same hotel. Now, I flatter myself that Nancy was completely unaware of my existence before this, although I was far from unaware of hers. Without realizing it, she's really mucked a few of my gigs up. I also may or may not have had her picture on a dartboard in my room at one point. That's water under the bridge, though."

The looks on the faces of her audience told her that they were unimpressed with her sense of humor. She cleared her throat and went on.

"The second thing was way worse. Once I learned about that, I knew I was stuck, and I decided Nancy was my only hope for help. So I'd just have to call a truce and make friends with my old enemy. Or would I? Maybe if I left mysterious, fairly anonymous notes, she'd be just curious enough to get to the bottom of it without dragging my name into the whole, messed up thing."

"What thing?" Ned asked.

Mandy shook her head. "I still can't believe it. I really can't. It's the craziest thing you've ever heard. See, the people who contracted me are actually planning –"

Her words were cut off by a sound like a small explosion. Everyone in the café began screaming and trying to hide under tables. Everyone, that is, except for Ned, Burt, and Aunt Eloise, who were staring in horrified shock at the growing red blotch on Mandy's chest. A dazed expression on her white face, she also looked down at it. She reached up dumbly to touch it with her finger and then slid off her chair onto the floor.

***ND***

"She's dead?" Nancy asked Ned several hours later when he finally had a chance to call her.

"Yeah," Ned replied. "She was dead by the time the paramedics got there."

Nancy closed her eyes and shivered. She was in over her head now. "How horrible. Are all of you all right?"

"Uh huh," Ned assured her. "The sniper just fired the one shot and then was out of there. I guess he just wanted to keep Mandy quiet."

"And that's all she told you?" Nancy asked. "She just said that she was hired to steal the jewelry and the people who hired her were planning something big that she wanted me to help her stop, but she never said what it was that they were planning."

"Right," Ned said. "It must be something big, though, because she was convinced that the government would make a deal with her if she told them about it."

"But then why did she want me to clear it up?" Nancy wondered.

"It's a good question," Ned agreed. "I guess we'll never know now."

*William Shakespeare's _The Winter's Tale_ , 4.4.686


	12. C Moore

_Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who has been reading and following! I'd especially like to thank Cherylann Rivers, ulstergirl, TinDog, and Maria for reviewing!_

* * *

Chapter XII: C. Moore

"How much did they tell the police?" Carson asked, sitting on his bed while Nancy sat on hers.

"Everything," Nancy told him. "At this point, they had to. I mean, it was a murder. They didn't have any choice."

"So that's that, then." Carson sighed. "It's a relief to have the police involved finally, but on the other hand, I don't like to think about if these people follow through on their threats."

"At least Ned, Aunt Eloise, and Burt have police protection now," Nancy said. "Ned told me he'd call Chief McGinnis and see about the River Heights police doing the same for everybody back home. So, unless they want to go through the police, that just leaves you and me for them to pick on."

"It's so frustrating that we still don't have a clue what's going on." Carson ran his fingers through his hair in exasperation. "That sniper couldn't have had worse timing."

"Or better," Nancy said softly as the words caused a train of thought to start going through her head.

"What was that?" Carson asked.

Nancy looked up at him. "The sniper couldn't have had better timing. It was just like a poor quality movie – a defector from the bad guys' side is just about to give some important information and then is shot by a mysterious sniper in mid-sentence. Then there's Burt's idea about this whole thing being a plan to get revenge on me. Ridiculously cryptic messages, an over-the-top surveillance on everyone I care about. It's all stuff right out of a movie."

Carson nodded. "You've got a point there. But what does it mean?"

Nancy shook her head. "I just don't know. Then there's the German boy and Michael Hertz. I had been assuming they were both M.H., but it doesn't look like it now. Mandy Hoover could have been lying about being M.H., of course, but why would she do that unless she was in on whatever there is to be in on? If she was in on it, I seriously doubt that she would have agreed to get killed."

"I guess it doesn't matter to us anymore," Carson said. "With the authorities involved now, we'd better get uninvolved as fast as possible."

"I guess so," Nancy agreed reluctantly. "The more these people do, the less I like letting them get away with it, though."

"The authorities have a better chance of catching them than we do," Carson told her. "Let's go to the police here, tell them everything we know, and then head for home."

***ND***

Even though Nancy felt like she still knew next to nothing about the whole case, it still took a long time to explain everything to the police. It was dark by the time she and Carson returned to their hotel for their last night's stay in it.

The explanation, coupled with stress and confusion, was exhausting. Nancy tumbled straight into bed without even bothering to change into pajamas. Several hours later, she was woken up from a dream that she could only vaguely remember but which shook her with that bizarre, moving quality that dreams can take on in the middle of the night.

As soon as she was awake, her mind jumped to the case. She thought over all the things that had happened – the notes from M.H. and Michael Hertz, the burglary, the German boy, the ill-fated stakeout at the vending machine, the dognapping, the stalking, Frank and Joe's capture of Jarrod Durring, Carson and her capture of Arthur Gib, the shooting at Aunt Eloise, the "see more" phone call, and finally Mandy Hoover's sudden appearance and even more sudden death. Try as she might, she could find no way to reconcile all these things.

Going over them all again, she found herself stuck on the same thing that had been bothering her ever since talking to Arthur Gib. Why had the stalking begun several days before Nancy was even working on a case? There were only two possible answers – someone was simply out for revenge on her or her father or they had somehow thought she was working on the case before she really had been.

This second possibility made Nancy stop and think. That could be. After all, there weren't too many eighteen-year-olds who went to lawyer conferences.

"The conference," Nancy said out loud, the realization hitting her as if with an electric shock. "Could it be?"

Immediately, she leapt out of her bed and darted across the room to Carson's. She began shaking him, saying, "Dad. Dad. Wake up."

"What is it, Nancy?" Carson mumbled sleepily.

"I need a list of everyone who was at the conference," Nancy said.

"What?" Carson asked, trying to wake up but not quite succeeding.

"The legal conference," Nancy repeated, shaking him again until he opened his eyes and sat up. "I need a list of everybody who went to the legal conference."

"Now?" Carson asked.

"Yes," Nancy told him. "It might solve the case."

"It's the middle of the night," Carson reminded her. "I'll have to wake up the people who organized the conference. Can't it wait until morning?"

"No, Dad," Nancy replied. "Aunt Eloise got shot at, and a girl got murdered today. We've got to stop these people as fast as possible."

"Okay, okay." Carson climbed out of bed and retrieved his phone. "It's not going to win me any friends, but I see your point."

He called one of the organizers of the conference, who was predictably unhappy at being awakened at that hour for such a strange request. After being assured of the urgency of the matter, the woman begrudgingly agreed to email the list to Carson.

A few moments later, the email arrived and Nancy and Carson, who was completely awake by now, began reading over it.

"What exactly are we looking for?" Carson asked as his eyes scanned the alphabetized list.

"It's a hunch," Nancy admitted. "I'll know it when I see it. There – that's the name." She pointed at the words "Moore, Caleb; Seattle, WA".

"What makes you think he's involved?" Carson looked at her questioningly.

"That call that George answered," Nancy said. "The 'see more' one. He didn't mean 'see more'; he meant 'C. Moore', as in Caleb Moore. Also, the call came from Seattle, and that's where Caleb Moore is from."

Carson nodded. "It could be. There are a lot of people with the first initial C and the last name Moore, though, and I'm sure a lot of them live in Seattle. What makes you so sure it's this one?"

"For one thing, he was staying at this hotel just before all these things started happening," Nancy explained. "For another, Arthur Gib was hired during the conference. Someone there must have seen me and assumed I was investigating, that someone being Caleb Moore."

"It's not much to go off of," Carson said skeptically.

"Do you think we could make a small detour to Seattle and call on Moore?" Nancy asked. "If he's innocent, nothing lost. If he's not –"

"We could get killed," Carson finished for her.

Nancy sighed. "That's not what I was going to say, but you do have a point. Couldn't we try, though?"

Carson took a few moments to think it over. On one hand, what he wanted most was to get Nancy and Eloise and all the others to a safe place as soon as possible. On the other hand, he didn't like giving up any more than Nancy did. He had to smile to himself a little in the dark – Nancy must have gotten some of her perseverance from him. Maybe some of her stubbornness, too.

"Okay," he said finally. "We won't let this slide, not on our watch. We're going to have to play it extra carefully, though. Let's rent a car and drive to Seattle. Once we're there, we'll make some discreet enquiries about Moore before we actually call on him."

"Sounds good," Nancy replied. "Let's leave right away. If we've already got another tail, maybe we call lose them in the dark."

***ND***

"I have to admit, I feel much safer having you here," Bess told Officer Logan Starr. "I just wish they could have sent more than one officer."

"Aren't I good enough?" Logan asked with a teasing grin.

Chief McGinnis of the River Heights Police Department was an old friend of Carson. Once he had gotten the news of what was happening, he had insisted on placing one of his officers on guard duty at the Marvin and Fayne homes, which were where Hannah and Togo were now staying. Dave also was spending most of his time there.

Officer Starr had been assigned for the task. He was one of the younger officer on the RHPD, and one of the few who admired Nancy rather than resented her. He was on friendly enough terms with Nancy and her friends that his presence wasn't as uncomfortable as that of another officer might have been.

"I wouldn't take it personally, Logan," George said to him. "Bess wouldn't be satisfied even if they stationed the whole United States Marine Corps around her house."

"I don't blame her," Bess's mother spoke up. She shivered. "This whole thing is so crazy and mixed up."

Logan went to the window and opened the blind a fraction of an inch to look out. "What I want to know is how are these people watching all of you. If they have someone following you around all the time with a camera, you would have seen them by now. And if there's only one, he has to take breaks every now and then."

"Maybe they have the house bugged," George suggested, feeling a little thrill at the idea. "Of course, we already know that they hired one hacker. Maybe they've hacked into all of our phones and are using those to keep tabs on us."

Bess, who had been holding her phone at that moment, dropped it like it was a poisonous snake and stared at it suspiciously. "Ugh. How do we make them stop if that's what they're doing?"

"Piece of cake," George replied. "Just let me take care of it."

Logan continued looking out the window. "There's a car pulling into the driveway."

Bess ran to the window to also look. "Oh, it's Dave," she said in relief.

"Hey, everybody," Dave greeted them as he came in the door.

"Did anything happen to you at the library?" Bess asked, hugging him.

"The most suspicious thing that happened to me was that my boss told me I don't need to come in for work until this is all cleared up," Dave replied lightheartedly.

"That's not a bad idea," Logan told him seriously. "At any rate, I don't think you should go alone."

Having someone following him – someone _else_ following him – didn't appeal to Dave, even if that someone was just looking out for his best interests. Even so, he didn't comment on Logan's advice. Instead he asked George, "How's your writing style analysis going?"

George shrugged. "It came up with several hundred possible matches, but I gave up trying to sort through them. We already know who M.H. is, anyway. I still don't get it, though. The software was wrong on every point, saying that M.H. was a high-school aged and educated boy. It's weird."

"It is," Dave agreed. "Although I guess weirder things have happened. Especially in this case."

Everyone thought silently about the strange events that had unfolded so far. A couple minutes later, Dave's phone chimed as a text came in.

"I shouldn't even be surprised at this point," he said after he read it.

"About what?" Bess asked.

Dave looked up from his phone. "That was from Ned. Another one of those weird things happened. Mandy Hoover is dead, no mistake about that, but it might have been because of a mistake. While the forensics team was examining the body, they found the remains of a squib driven into the wound."


	13. Michael

_Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who is reading, following, and reviewing! It means a lot to me!_

* * *

Chapter XIII: Michael

The sun was rising toward noon as a tired Nancy and Carson sat in their rented car in the parking lot of an office building in Seattle, going over what they had learned that morning. Everyone they talked to had insisted that Caleb Moore was an upstanding lawyer with an unimpeachable reputation. No one knew anything about him that could connect him to something shady.

"Maybe my hunch wasn't so good," Nancy said, her tiredness making her discouraged.

"Oh well." Carson yawned. "We're here at Moore's office anyway, so we might as well go in. Who knows? Even if he's not directly involved in the case, he might still be the one that caller was talking about. He might know something helpful."

Father and daughter got out of their car and went inside the building. They quickly found the number of Moore's office and got in the elevator to go to the sixth floor. A few other people were in the car with them and it stopped a couple of times to let people in or out before it reached the floor Carson and Nancy wanted.

"What are we going to say to him?" Carson asked as the elevator moved upwards. "We'll have to be pretty tactful if we want him to actually be helpful."

"Right," Nancy agreed. "Although if he is involved, he's going to be pretty suspicious when we show up anyway."

Before they had decided on a solution to that question, the elevator stopped at the sixth floor and the doors opened. Nancy and Carson were about to step out when they saw someone who was evidently waiting to get on the elevator – the German boy from the hotel. The Drews stared at him in surprise for a moment or two, and he stared back at them with the same astonishment.

Finally, the boy jumped into the elevator and grabbed Nancy's hand. " _Hilf mir. Bitte._ "

Nancy looked at her dad and then back at the boy. "I don't understand. Do you speak English?"

" _Ja, aber nicht jetzt,_ " the boy replied, jabbing the button for the first floor.

He didn't say another word as he stared anxiously at the lights indicating which floor the elevator was on. To his frustration, other people in the car had wanted to go higher, and so the elevator was continuing to climb. When the car stopped on the ninth floor, he impatiently grabbed both Carson and Nancy by the arm and dragged them out.

"What is this all about?" Carson asked him. "Who are you?"

The boy didn't answer right away. "I do not speak English good," he finally said with a thick German accent. "We have to go. We should go down the stairs. He will be waiting for me by the elevator."

"Who?" Nancy asked. "Your uncle?"

The boy's face clouded. "He is not my uncle. Come. We have to go."

He began walking quickly toward the stairs. Nancy and Carson exchanged puzzled glances and then began following him.

When they reached the stairwell, the boy leaned over the railing to look down at the lower levels. "It is safe," he said. "Hurry."

He began bounding down the stairs two at a time. Nancy and Carson had to run to keep up with him. The boy had just reached the landing at the sixth floor when the door swung open. The man who had claimed to be the boy's uncle stood in the doorway. The boy froze, as did the Drews. When the man saw Carson and Nancy on the stairs, his face contorted with rage. He made a lunge for the boy, but the boy agilely jumped back just in time.

"Come! Come!" the boy said to Nancy and Carson as he ran back up the stairs past them.

They needed no urging to begin following him. However, the man was close behind them and it seemed impossible for them to outrun him. Even so, the boy dashed through the door to the seventh floor. Carson and Nancy followed him, and a moment later, the "uncle" did as well.

The stairwell was at the end of the hallway, and the Drews and the boy found themselves cornered. Nancy looked around her desperately for something that could be used as a weapon if the man tried to harm them.

"Scream, Nancy," her father told her.

For a moment, Nancy didn't understand. Then it dawned on her. They were in a building full of people. Someone was bound to come if she started screaming. So she did.

The man looked startled. Then, cursing under his breath, he turned and ran back for the stairwell.

Carson leaned against the wall with a sigh of relief. "It's too bad you're so level-headed, Nancy. If we would have had Bess here, she would have started screaming long before that."

Nancy smiled feebly as the realization of their escape came to her. "I'll have to work on that."

A man and two women approached them. "We heard a scream," one of the women said. "Is everything okay?"

"Yes, yes," the boy spoke up before either Nancy or Carson could. "Everything is okay. She tripped."

"Are you all right?" the other woman asked Nancy kindly.

"Yes, I'm fine," Nancy told her.

When the concerned bystanders had been convinced that nothing serious was wrong, they wandered back to their offices. Then Carson and Nancy turned to the boy.

"How about you start explaining now?" Carson asked him.

"No, let's go outside first," the boy said. "Please, we must hurry."

He led them back to the elevator, and they were able to reach the first floor without any more excitement. They got into the Drews' rented car, but the boy refused to talk until Carson had started it and gotten back on the street. When they had gone a few blocks, the boy relaxed and sighed.

"Finally, I am free," he said.

"What's going on?" Nancy asked. "Who are you and who was that man?"

"I am Michael Hertz," the boy told them. "I do not know who that man is. He said he is my Uncle Johann, but he is not. I am not stupid. I do not have an Uncle Johann."

"Okay," Carson said. "Tell us the whole story from the start."

"I will," Michael replied. "I live in Germany. I go to boarding school there. When I went home for summer on the train, a man met me at the train station instead of my parents. He said he was Uncle Johann and my parents sent him to bring me home. I knew he was lying, and tried to go without him. Then – I do not know what happened. I do not remember anything until I woke up on an airplane."

"Then you were kidnapped," Nancy observed.

"Yes," Michael said. "The airplane landed in America. I do not know how the man got past the borders. He took me to a hotel by the ocean and he said something about 'see more'. He said it a lot. I do not know what it means.

"I saw you at the hotel, Nancy, and I knew who you were. I saw your picture on the internet one time. I thought you could help me. I left a note on the beach and I sent an email to your boyfriend with a fake email I made."

"How did you know about Ned?" Nancy asked.

Michael shrugged. "I remembered from the article. After looking on the internet for a long time, I found his email. But it did not help. You did not help me. I tried to run away, but the man catched me. Then we came here. I found your phone number on the internet and called it to tell you what I heard about 'see more.'"

"If you were allowed to go on the internet, why didn't you contact your parents or the authorities?" Carson asked.

"I was not allowed to go on the internet," Michael told him. "I had to do it when the man was not there. He said he would know if I con – contacted my parents. I thought maybe he would not know if I contacted Nancy, but he did." He rubbed the back of his shoulder as if it hurt him.

"Do you know why you were kidnapped?" Nancy asked.

"He did not say," Michael replied. "My father was a important man in the German government. Maybe that is why."

"It could be," Carson agreed. "We'd better take you to the police so they can start working on getting you home."

"Did you see or hear anything while that man was holding you?" Nancy asked. "Were there any other people?"

"There was a girl," Michael said. "They did not say their names when I was there. She was blond and I did not like her laugh."

"Anything else?" Nancy insisted. "Anything at all?"  
Michael thought for a moment. "The man had a lot of money and rings and necklaces. I saw them one time by accident."

"Where were they keeping you in that building where we found you just now?" Carson asked.

"In a office that said 'Moore' on the door," Michael replied. "I think maybe it is what 'see more' means, but I still do not understand it."

"While you were here, did you see anyone besides the man or the girl?" Nancy questioned.

"No," Michael told her. "And I did not see the girl. She did not come here with us."

"When you emailed Ned," Nancy said, going back to an earlier part of the story, "you asked me to look in a copy of _The Winter's Tale_ at the library. When I got there, the page you asked me to look at had been torn out. What was the message you left for me and how were you able to leave it there?"

"The man took me to the library when he met the girl there," Michael explained. "They told me to read while they talked. I read _The Winter's Tale_ in school this year. I wanted to tell someone that the man was not my uncle, so I circled words that might tell them that. I also wrote down what I heard the man and the girl say."

"What was that?" Nancy asked eagerly.

"I did not hear much," the boy replied. "I heard 'see more' again and I heard them say some numbers. I wrote them down."

"What were the numbers?" Nancy continued.

"I do not remember," the boy said. "They were just numbers. Maybe fifteen numbers. There were also some letters. I did not know what they meant, so I cannot remember them now."

"Maybe it was a combination of some kind," Carson mused.

"Of all the messages you wrote to be lost," Nancy murmured.

Carson slowed down for a red light, but the driver of the car behind them did not put on his brakes fast enough. With a jolt and a bang, that car rear-ended Carson's. Muttering, he pulled off the street and into a gas station that was right there. The other car followed.

As Carson and Nancy got out of their car, the other driver was already surveying the damage. Carson cringed when he saw the crumpled back end of the car.

"Sorry about that," the other driver said. "It was my mistake. My insurance will cover it, I'm sure."

"I hope so," Carson replied. "It's a rental car. We'll have to report it to the police, too. You haven't called them yet, right?"

"Right," the driver said, "and I'm not going to." He reach under his jacket and pulled out a gun, which he held low and out of sight of anyone besides Nancy and Carson. "You two and the kid are going to have to come along with me."


	14. Divide and Conquer

_Author's Note: Once again, I'd like to thank everybody who is reading, following, and especially reviewing. Your support means a lot to me._

* * *

Chapter XIV: Divide and Conquer

"I'm starting to get worried," Bess said, checking her phone for the fifth time in the last two minutes. "How could Nancy not respond to finding out about the squib? It's been an entire night."

"Burt says they still haven't heard from her or her dad either," George added.

"Worse yet, the police in Troy, Oregon don't know what's up with them," Logan interjected. "They left town in the middle of the night, night before last. They got a rental car and said they'd return it in Seattle."

"Well? Did they?" Bess asked.

"I've got a call in to the rental agency," Logan replied. "They're checking it out."

Mrs. Marvin walked into the living room at that point. "Any news?" she asked.

Logan repeated his information, and Mrs. Marvin shook her head. "I wish Nancy wouldn't get mixed up in things like this."

"She didn't even have to do anything to get mixed up in this one," George reminded her aunt.

"Well, I made breakfast. Are any of you hungry?" Mrs. Marvin asked.

"I'm too nervous to eat much, Mom, but we can't let it go to waste," Bess replied. She hurried off to the kitchen, and George followed.

"No thanks, ma'am," Logan told her. "I ate before I came this morning."

Despite her claims of not being hungry, Bess managed to polish off two helpings of the enormous omelet that Mrs. Marvin had made and a generous helping of Hannah's pancakes. The others mostly picked at their food, too nervous and lost in thought to focus on eating.

Mrs. Marvin was just starting to clear away the plates when Logan came in the room. "The rental agency got back to me," he said, his tone serious.

"Is it bad news?" Hannah asked fearfully, bracing herself for the worst.

"Carson and Nancy didn't return the car," Logan replied. "The police found it abandoned at a gas station. It appeared to have been rear-ended. It was a busy street, but they couldn't find any witnesses since they don't know when the accident occurred. That is, if it was an accident."

"And they can't find Nancy or her dad anywhere?" Bess asked, though she already knew the answer.

"That's right," Logan confirmed. "Considering everything that's happened, the Seattle police don't have to wait the standard twenty-four hours to start looking for them, but still."

"I'm getting tired of this," George burst out in frustration. "Burt and Ned are over in New York getting shot at and now Nancy and her dad are in Seattle vanishing into thin air. I'm sick of sitting around and doing nothing."

"Well, what are you going to do?" Bess asked. "We're hundreds of miles away from either of them."

George looked over at Logan. She had the beginnings of a plan in her mind, but she didn't want to talk about it in front of a cop, even one who was on friendly terms with her. So she left it at, "I don't know."

***ND***

The NYPD wasn't quite the RHPD. As Ned sat back in a chair in one of the wings of a police station, he swore to himself that he was never going to complain about the River Height police again. While Bess and George and the others were comfortably at home with a police guard assigned to watch the neighboring Marvin and Fayne houses, Burt, Aunt Eloise, and he had been persuaded to stay in one of the police stations for protection.

"In other words, we're in jail," Burt said, as if he was summing up what Ned was thinking. "I never knew getting protected was the same as getting punished."

"It's not," Ned replied. For the most part he agreed with Burt, but right now he felt like arguing. "We can still make all the phone calls we want and we've got this nice sitting room."

The sarcasm behind the "nice" wasn't lost on Burt, who looked around at the four swivel chairs, small table, and bare walls in disgust.

"Yeah, it's great," he said, matching sarcasm with Ned's tone. "The five-star hotels should really watch the competition. If news about this place leaks out, people will start doing whatever they can to be placed in protective custody. Say, maybe we could all fake having nervous breakdowns and get moved to the hospital."

"How about you try that?" Ned asked.

"Aunt Eloise might be able to convince them," Burt replied. "She's been pretty shaken up ever since – that happened."

"She's not the only one," Ned thought, but he didn't want to say it out loud. Fortunately, he was spared the necessity of saying anything at all when his phone rang. For a moment, he thought that it must be Nancy, and he couldn't help feeling a distinct disappointment when Bess's name was the one that showed up on the screen.

"Any news?" he asked, forgetting to say hello or any other kind of greeting.

"Unfortunately, yes," Bess replied.

***ND***

Carson woke up with his head splitting. For a few seconds, he couldn't remember where he was or how he'd gotten there, but he had a definite feeling that what had happened hadn't been pleasant. Then he realized that he was lying on his stomach on a musty mattress, his head bent so that he could still breathe and his arms and legs tied so that he could scarcely feel them anymore.

Painfully, he tried to sit up. Without the use of his hands, it was no easy task, but he managed it in the end. Even so, the movement caused spasms of pain to reverberate through his head. Once he could straighten his neck, he found that it was very stiff from the unnatural position that it had been in. From this and from how numb his arms and legs were, he guessed that he must have been tied up for some time.

Then Carson started to remember what had happened. He, Nancy, and Michael had cooperated with the man with the gun. They'd been told to sit on the floor of the back seat, and all of them had been blindfolded. The car had driven for a long time. Carson thought that he had tried to keep track of how long and when it had turned, but he couldn't remember that now.

It could have been hours later when the car finally stopped. The blindfold hadn't been taken off until they were all inside. They were in a room then, an office, Carson thought. It seemed like there were a lot of people in it, but maybe it had just been a small room. There had definitely been at least three men and one woman.

One of the men had been "Uncle Johann". He had yelled angrily at Michael and then smacked him across the face. Carson had tried to intervene on Michael's behalf, but all he had gotten for his trouble was hit over the head. He must have been knocked out, because that was the last thing he could remember before waking up here.

Now he was in a concrete cell. The only thing in it was the mattress that Carson had been laid down on. The mattress itself smelled horrible, like there could be mice nesting in it. Carson made a face at the thought and scooted himself off the mattress onto the floor. It wasn't particularly clean either, but at least he could see what was on it.

Now he tried to think of some idea to escape from this place. He would have to get himself untied somehow. From how numb his arms were and the fact that he had nothing sharp to help him, that was certainly going to be difficult. Then he'd have to find a way out of the cell. There was one window, too high to reach even standing up and too small to crawl through even if it could be reached. The only other exit was the door, which was no doubt securely locked.

Most of all, however, he wondered what these people had done to Nancy and where she was.

***ND***

In another cell, identical to her father's, Nancy was wondering the same thing about her father. Having been spared being hit over the head, her memory of what had happened was clearer than Carson's, but that was hardly a relief.

She had also tried to remember how far the car had gone and in what direction, but she had finally given the task up as hopeless. Without a way to measure the time precisely, there were just too many variables for the attempt to even be helpful.

Then they had been hustled out of the car into the office where a woman and four men, plus the man who had taken them prisoner, were waiting. They hadn't said a word to Nancy or her father at first. Instead, "Uncle Johann" had chastised Michael for running away and then had cuffed him on the face.

Even now, Nancy's blood boiled in rage at the thought. At the time, she had been about to try to stop "Uncle Johann" somehow, but Carson had beaten her to it. To her horror, their captor had hit Carson over the head with his gun, knocking him out.

That had seemed to sober the crooks. They promptly tied Nancy and Michael up and marched them out of the room. Nancy didn't know what they had done with Carson, or even how badly he was hurt. Then they had taken Michael off in one direction and led Nancy to this cell. They had left her inside, telling her that someone would be back to talk to her later.

"I'm not going to be here later," Nancy had vowed at the time.

Hours had gone by since then, though, and she was no nearer escape than she had been when the door had first closed behind her. She wondered just how long she would have to wait before it was "later".

The question was answered for her a few minutes later when the door to the cell swung open and the woman from the office walked in with "Uncle Johann."

"Where's my dad?" Nancy asked them.

"We'll tell you that later, if you cooperate with us," the woman replied. "First, I want you to tell me everything you know and who else you've told."

Nancy bit her lip. "What difference does it make?"

"To you, none," the woman said bluntly. "But it might help your friends."

"I say get rid of them all," Johann interjected. "You can't really think she's kept anything to herself."

"If it hadn't been for you, she wouldn't have anything to tell anybody," the woman told him acidly. "Now, come on, Ms. Drew. You'd better tell me what I want to know. If you don't, I'll put my associate's idiotic plan to use and have his hired stalkers kill all of your friends. You've already seen that they have no reservations about that sort of thing."

Nancy took in a long breath, desperately trying to calm her pounding heart. "And if I do tell you, what happens to my friends?"

"I won't offend you by trying to lie to you," the woman replied. "You already know that the answer depends on what you tell me. If you've given your friends no harmful information that has not also been passed along to the police, your friends will be spared."

"What about my dad?" Nancy asked.

The woman gave her almost a compassionate smile. "You're a smart girl. You can figure that one out on your own. You can't save yourself or your father, but you can save your friends. Why don't you do it?"


	15. Mind Games

_Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading, following, and reviewing! You guys are awesome!_

* * *

Chapter XV: Mind Games

"Just put it on speaker phone already, Burt, so Ned can hear, too," George said impatiently.

"Okay, okay, as soon as I figure out how. Not everyone's a tech genius like you," Burt replied.

George rolled her eyes. "It doesn't take a tech genius. You literally just have to press one button."

"Oh, you mean like this." Burt's voice suddenly took on the different resonance that occurs when a person is using speaker phone.

"Yes," George said. "Can you hear now, Ned?"

"Yeah." Ned's voice sounded similar. "You three are all there?"

"That's affirmative," Dave told him. "So, now that we've called a meeting of the minds, what's on yours, George?"

"Please tell us you have some plan to find Nancy," Bess added.  
George propped her phone up on her desk and stole a glance at the door. She knew that Officer Starr wouldn't be listening behind it, and that it really didn't matter if he was, but she still felt a need for secrecy.

"I'm afraid not," she replied to Bess's plea. "I think I'm starting to see how some of these pieces fit together, though."

"Good, because I'm still all at sea on that one," Burt said.

"Everything that's happened is completely crazy," George explained. "It's so crazy that whoever's behind it has to be doing it on purpose."

"You mean, this is one big mind game that someone's pulling on Nancy?" Bess asked. "I guess that fits, except for one thing. Why?"

"There're two possible reasons," George told her. "One is that this whole thing has been directed against Nancy as a plot for revenge from the very beginning. The other is that somehow, Nancy found out something that someone got pretty nervous about her knowing and they're trying to distract her from doing anything about it."

"That could be," Ned agreed. "If that second one is the case, then we've got to go back to the very beginning to figure this out. What's the first thing that happened?"

"The German boy," Bess replied quickly. "Remember Nancy saw him looking at her the night before anything else happened."

"Except that the stalking began before that," Dave reminded her. "Besides, what's she going to learn from some kid looking at her? It must have been something before that."

"But before that she was just at the-" Burt started to say, but he was interrupted by Ned, George, and Bess saying in unison, "The lawyer conference."

"That just could be it," George said excitedly.

"What could be it?" Dave asked. "I think I missed something."

"How many eighteen-year-olds do you know who go to lawyer conferences?" Ned replied. "Someone thought that Nancy was there working on a case, and they needed to scare her off, or at least confuse her so much she couldn't solve it."  
"This practically solves it then," Bess said. "Now we know why all of this has been happening."

"Hate to burst you guys' bubble," Burt broke in, "but even if this is the why, we still don't know who or what they're up to, and worst of all, we still don't know where Nancy and Mr. Drew are."

"Right." Ned sounded downcast again.

"Well, it's still better than nothing," Dave said. "If we know why, maybe we can figure out who and what, and that might tell us where. What sort of crime could be going down at a lawyer conference?"

"What sort of crime couldn't be?" Bess asked. "I mean, yeah, lawyers are supposed to uphold the law, but they also know all sorts of ways to get around it. They know how to commit crimes without even breaking the law."  
"They're not exactly crimes, then," George reminded her.

"Whatever," Bess said. "I'm just tired of sitting around doing nothing. Isn't there something we can do? I'd be willing to fly out to Seattle and start searching it inch by inch to find Nancy."

"No, hold on," Ned told her. "That's not going to work. Whoever we're up against plays rough, but they also like to hide. We've been playing right into their hands."  
"Huh?" Dave asked. "Just say it plain, Ned."  
"They're trying to split us up," Ned explained. "We can't help Nancy if we're split up, and worse still, we've been distracting and worrying her this whole time. It's a sort of divide and conquer tactic. Of course, they realize that they can't pit us against each other, so they do the next best thing. They make sure we can't help each other. What better way to do that than to have us all spread out all over the country?"

"You've got a point," George agreed. "Too bad we didn't realize sooner. Now things are different. We're playing a whole different game since Nancy and her dad disappeared. Someone's got to go after them."

"Then it should be Burt and me," Ned insisted. "You guys need to stay with Hannah. We can't split ourselves up any more than we already are."

"What about Aunt Eloise?" Bess reminded him. "She's the whole reason you and Burt are out there."

"True," Ned agreed. "But she's safe now, with the police."

"Hey, guys, listen," Burt said. "I appreciate how noble you all are, fighting over who's going to go into the Great Unknown and put themselves in constant danger, but it's kind of a moot point. What are we going to do when we get to Seattle? Start walking around, showing people pictures of Nancy and asking if they've seen her? We don't have any lead that the police don't also have."

"Then what should we do?" George asked. "Keep sitting around and twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the police to turn something up?"

"Not necessarily," Burt replied. "We just need to work from the only angle that we've got one up on the police. Or rather, that the police need our help to work on. We should set a trap for the stalkers slash snipers. We've still got at least one in River Heights and one in New York. If we can catch them, they might be able to give us a clue."

"Neither of the ones who have been caught so far know anything," Bess reminded him, a dubious tone in her voice.

"The others might," Burt said. "Who knows? Even if they don't, we can at least get them off our backs and give ourselves more room to help Nancy."

"What about that one that Nancy and her dad caught but let go?" Dave asked. "We could tip the police off about him. Maybe he's learned something since then, or maybe he really did know something all along."

"It's worth a try," Ned agreed.

"Okay, so the only problem we have left is to come up with a scheme for catching the stalkers and getting the police to go along with it," Bess said.

She was sitting on George's bed with Dave seated next to her, and George flopped in a chair across the room. All three of them, as well as Ned and Burt, fell silent as they tried to think of a plausible plan.

As she thought, George stood up and began pacing around the room. She stopped by the window and looked across the street and then down into her lawn. Her heart practically stopped when she saw a car stop and a man with a baseball cap pulled down over his face get out. He glanced up at her and then threw something directly at her.

"Everybody, get down!" she screamed and made a dash for the door just as the object exploded.

***ND***

Nancy looked up at the woman and Johann, doing everything she could to hide her fear. She clearly had to tell them something, but it had to be something they would believe, something that would convince them to leave her friends alone. That ruled out telling them that she knew nothing.

"Everything my friends know has been reported to the police," Nancy said. "You won't save yourselves anything by harming them."

"That's good to know," the woman replied. "If that's the truth, then we won't bother. We would like to know just what it is that's been passed along to the police, though."

"You already know that," Nancy told her. "Or at least, your friend there does. Him and the maid from the hotel. They're the ones who let slip everything I've learned."

"The girl's already paid for her stupidity, though unfortunately that was through an act of even more stupidity on this idiot's part," the woman assured her. As for this idiot, I've already asked him. He's too stupid to even guess how much you know."

"That's not true," Johann replied. "She knows everything. She could ruin us."

"You see what I mean?" the woman asked, still speaking to Nancy. "He saw you at that lawyer conference, and somehow got the idea that you were onto us and were there to investigate him. Then he decided to have Jacqueline steal a few jewels anyway, and I guess, make sure you were investigating him. Really, you almost have to feel sorry for him."

"That wasn't the only thing," Johann whined. "There were also the notes."

"And whose fault was that?" the woman countered icily.

As she listened to the argument, things were beginning to click into place for Nancy. "He let Michael get away to write the notes," she said out loud. "Then you tried to get me off that trail by having Jacqueline claim to have written them, giving the name Mandy Hoover."

"It wasn't my idea," the woman told her. "I would have put a stop to it immediately. "

"I doubt Jacqueline knew what was going to happen to her," Nancy continued. "Maybe she thought she was just supposed to give some misleading 'clue.' Whatever the case, Johann here decided to kill several birds with one stone – if you'll pardon the expression - and get rid of Jacqueline, keep the messages from being associated with Michael, and finish completely traumatizing my friends, all with one shot."

"That was the idea, yes," the woman said. "Completely unapproved by myself and the others who ought to have had some say in it. The question is, how much of this did you tell the police?"

"No." Nancy gave her a wry smile. "The real question is, how much did I pass on to the German government?"

The woman blinked at her, unable to say anything for a moment. Johann immediately said, "See? See? What did I tell you? She knows everything. She's told everything. It's over. We're done."

"Quiet," the woman told him. "You know more than I thought, Ms. Drew. If you've really gotten this information out there, you've dealt us a pretty serious blow."

"Yeah," Nancy agreed. "It's also not going to help matters when your lawyer, Moore, gets arrested and won't be able to help your jewel sideline look legitimate. You won't have any more income for your real goal."

The woman muttered something under her breath. "I guess you were right after all," she said to her companion. Forget her friends. We need to get out of here now."

"What about her, Drew, and the kid?" Johann asked.

"Kill them," the woman replied.

As she hurried away, Johann pulled his gun out of its holster. Nancy felt her heart begin to pound faster as she watched. The action only took seconds, but time seemed to have frozen for Nancy. Johann didn't act like a television villain, sneering and laughing as he took his time completing his job. With practically no expression, he leveled the gun at Nancy.


	16. The End of the Line

_Author's Note: I would like to thank everyone who has been reading, following, and reviewing!_

Chapter XVI: The End of the Line

Dave saw the object shatter the glass in the window as it flew through. Thinking fast, he grabbed Bess and dragged her down behind the bed a moment before the explosion. For a moment, they both held absolutely still, but then Dave jumped to his feet.

Fortunately, the explosion hadn't started a fire. There was a large, gaping hole in the wall and floor, though, and pieces of shrapnel were embedded in the walls.

"George, are you all right?" he asked, seeing her lying halfway through the door. He bent down to help her sit up.

"I – I don't know," she said. "Am I?"

"What happened?" Logan Starr demanded, bounding up the stairway.

"Someone threw a grenade in the window," Dave explained. "He couldn't have gone far."

"I'm on it," Logan replied, dashing back down and brushing past George's parents.

"George!" Mrs. Fayne cried out. "Are you okay? Where's Bess?"

"I'm right here," Bess said, shakily poking her head out from behind the bed. "What about George?"

"I think she's fine," Dave assured them all. "I don't see any cuts, so none of the shrapnel hit her. She just got knocked down by the force."

"Thank goodness," Mr. Fayne breathed, kneeling down next to his daughter. "It's a miracle none of you were hurt."

Tears sprang into Mrs. Fayne's eyes. For a moment, she looked as if she was trying to fight them, but then she broke down and allowed herself to sob. "I can't take this anymore. Why? Why is it happening?"

George shook her head, trying to clear it. Then she put her arms around her mother. "Hey, Mom, it's okay. I'm fine."

As she tried to breathe and calm herself, Bess became aware of the sound of several men shouting and a dog barking. Looking out through the space where the wall of George's bedroom had been, she saw her dad and Logan Starr struggling with another man, while Togo was furiously tearing at the stranger's pantlegs.

"They've got him!" she said excitedly.

A few minutes later, more police and the fire department had arrived on the scene. The Faynes, the Marvins, Dave, and Hannah had all been asked to wait outside while a bomb squad examined George's room. Meanwhile, the police were asking them a myriad of questions.

"I saw him throw that grenade," Mr. Marvin was explaining to Chief McGinnis, who had come to investigate personally. "I guess I didn't think about it that he might have other weapons. I just ran and tackled him."

"It's a good thing, too," Logan added. "The guy would have been long gone before I could have gotten to him otherwise."

Mrs. Marvin put her arm around her husband and leaned her head on his shoulder, while Bess kissed him on the cheek.

"You hear that, Dad? You're a hero," she said to him.

"So far, the guy hasn't said a word," McGinnis told the others. "We're trying to convince him that he'll be better off if he just talks, considering that we've got him dead to rights on an attempted murder charge."

Bess shivered. Everyone else looked solemn and downcast. The whole incident had given them a sick feeling in the pits of their stomachs. The silence was broken by Mr. Fayne's cell phone ringing. Automatically, he pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen.

"It's Burt," he said.

George slapped her forehead with her palm. "Oh, man. We were talking to him and Ned when the grenade exploded. They're probably frantic."

***ND***

Nancy didn't even have time to pray as she watched the handgun being pointed at her. Even if she'd had the time, she wouldn't have been able to think of the words to say. Instead, she just looked numbly at the man who was about to kill her, her numbness giving her every appearance of steadfast courage. In that moment, the only coherent thought to pass through her mind was to wonder how much it would hurt.

A loud noise blared. Nancy instinctively closed her eyes, but it was less than a second before she realized that the noise was not the blast of a gun. It was the sound of an alarm going off. The sound put Johann off-guard and he let his gun-hand relax as he listened to the sound.

A desperate thought flashed into Nancy's brain – this was her only chance! It wasn't a good one, but it couldn't be any worse to be killed trying to escape than just sitting there. Without taking the time to weigh her chances, she somehow launched herself straight at Johann, even though her arms and ankles were securely tied.

Being attacked by a bound prisoner was evidently the last thing Johann expected. At any rate, he allowed himself to be bowled over, and his head struck the concrete floor hard. He lost consciousness.

Nancy sat down next to him and used her bound hands as well as she could to try to find a knife. To her relief, he had one in his pocket. Even with this tool, it took Nancy a few agonizing seconds to cut through the ropes on her arms, and every moment she expected either Johann to wake up or someone else to find her. Finally, however, she sliced through the last cord, thinking how grateful she was that her captors hadn't used handcuffs.

She cut through the ropes on her ankles, and then used them to tie up Johann. For extra security, she dragged him into the cell and was about to close the door, which locked automatically. Just before she did, she noticed Johann's gun lying on the floor inside the cell, and she took it out. It wouldn't do to leave that with Johann.

Biting her lip, she looked down at the gun in her hand. There hadn't been many times that she had had to use a gun in her sleuthing, and she never carried one. They always made her nervous, because she knew that she would probably never be able to come to terms with it if she ever shot anyone, even if it had been the only way to save another person.

Still, whether she had to fire it or not, the gun might come in handy in escaping. It would certainly give her an edge, and she would be foolish to throw the opportunity away. Resolutely, she tucked the gun into the waistband of her pants and focused her attention on the bigger question of what to do next.

It wasn't an easy question to answer. She had no idea how the building was laid out or where her dad or Michael were being held. She didn't even know which way to go to get out, and once she was outside, what then? Would there be a way to escape completely?

The decision was made for her when she heard the sound of running footsteps coming toward her down the hallway she was standing in. Without another thought, she turned and ran in the opposite direction. There was a door at the end of the hallway, and she pulled on the doorknob, praying both that it would be open and that there would be no one inside.

To her relief, the door opened easily and she slipped inside. Once she was there, she looked around in surprise at what was unmistakably a scientific laboratory. There were benches full of apparatus for experiments and a hood where a number of bottles were carefully arranged. Fortunately, there were no people in the room.

"What are these people up to?" Nancy wondered aloud.

She knew that it obviously had something to do with Germany, but she was still in the dark as to exactly how. For a moment, she was tempted to snoop around the lab and see if she could find anything out, but she quickly dismissed that idea. She had to find Carson and Michael and get out of there.

Suddenly, footsteps behind the door interrupted her thoughts. Someone was coming. Nancy desperately looked around for someplace to hide. Without time to think about it, she had to settle for the most obvious hiding place in sight – a supply closet. She ducked inside it just as the door to the laboratory opened.

Footsteps pounded across the lab. A door on the other side of the room opened and slammed shut. With a sigh of relief, Nancy allowed herself to relax for a moment before opening the door to the closet a crack. She looked through it, but it appeared that the room was empty again.

Now she had to make a decision. There was a good probability that the people who had just come running through the lab were looking for her. They had come from the direction of her cell, and it wasn't likely that they hadn't noticed her absence. They were also ahead of her now, so whichever way she went, she would probably run into people who were expecting her.

As she tried to sort this out, her gaze continued to rove about the room. She noticed a large map of Europe on the wall, and out of curiosity, she went to take a closer look at it. Four cities were marked with pins: Brussels, Luxembourg, Frankfurt, and Strasbourg. For a moment, the significance of this didn't sink in. Then she began to realize what this meant.

"The T word," she murmured. "It's all starting to make sense now."

She had no sooner thought this than the door handle on the opposite door of the one she entered rattled. With no time to get back to her hiding place, she simply sank to the floor and crawled behind one of the benches, praying that whoever it was wouldn't see her.

"How could you let her escape?" she heard a man's voice say. "She was tied up and you had a gun. I can't believe this. Lennel will have our heads for this. First the kid gets away and now her."

"It was the alarm," Nancy heard Johann grumble. "It distracted me and she knocked me over. But, come on, it's not like she can really get away. Her or the kid."

"They'd better not. If we lose either one of them –" The other man let his sentence hang.

"I know, I know," Johann said. "We'd better go check to make sure Drew's still where we left him."

"And take care of him at the same time," the other added. "You go do that and I'll keep looking. And do it right this time."

The two men separated, one going through one door and the other exiting through the other. Nancy dared to peek out of her hiding place just as they were leaving so that she could see which way Johann went. He was the one who went through the door that she had come through.

Being as careful and quiet as she could, she began to follow him. By some good luck, or perhaps something more than luck, they met no one in the hallways. Johann evidently didn't hear Nancy, as he didn't look either to the left or the right as he went.

After a few minutes, just after he rounded a corner, he stopped in front of a door and unlocked it with a key that he took out of his pocket. Nancy hurriedly hid behind the corner and listened.

"All right, Drew," Johann's voice came to her. "It's the end of the line for you."


	17. Confession

_Author's Note: Hey, all! Thanks for waiting an extra day and sorry about the delay. With all the craziness in the last week, I completely spaced posting. I also completely spaced a very important anniversary yesterday, June 1 – the ninetieth anniversary of the publication of the first Hardy Boys book,_ The Tower Treasure! _Happy belated birthday, Frank and Joe!_

 _Once again, I'd like to thank you all for reading, following, and reviewing. It means a lot to me!_

Chapter XVII: Confession

Nancy closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. She knew this wasn't going to be easy. What if – but there was no point in wasting time thinking about that. There was only one thing to do and she only had a few seconds to do it.

She pulled the gun out of her waistband and peered around the corner. Johann hadn't passed through the doorway and was still in sight. That was good. That meant Nancy didn't have to run all the way down to the door.

"Johann, drop the gun," Nancy demanded, poking the muzzle of the gun out just far enough for Johann to see.

"What the –" Johann spun around and saw Nancy looking at him. Without a moment's hesitation, he fired his own handgun at her.

Nancy pulled her head back behind the wall just in time. For a moment, she panicked, not knowing what to do in a gunfight. She willed herself to stay calm. Then she peeked around the corner just far enough to aim past Johann's ear and fired.

"Drop the gun, now," she demanded again, although she knew that now she was in a really tough position. Johann's cohorts must have heard the shots and would be coming to help him any minute. "That was a warning shot," she added. "The next won't be aimed at the wall."

Johann held his gun up, but he didn't shoot. Several seconds passed as he and Nancy aimed their guns at each other. Nancy didn't believe for a moment that she had sounded either intimidating or confident, so it came as a surprise when Johann lowered his gun and set it on the floor.

Surprised though she may be, Nancy didn't waste any time in taking advantage of her position. Immediately, she stepped out from behind the corner, still pointing her gun at the thug.

"Get down on the ground," she ordered him.

As he obeyed, Nancy hurried forward and picked up Johann's gun, which he had evidently gotten to replace the one that Nancy had already taken. She then looked in the cell and saw her father sitting on a mattress, his hands of feet tied.

"Nancy!" he said. "You escaped."

Nancy nodded. "We don't have much time. We've got to get out of here." She bent down and began slicing through Carson's bonds with Johann's knife.

"Do you know where Michael is?" Carson asked.

"No," Nancy replied. "He escaped, too, though. That's what the alarms have been about. Well, I guess probably me, too."

"We need to find him and get out of here," Carson said.

"I've got an idea." Nancy looked down at Johann.

She quickly unloaded one gun and handed it to the thug. Then she had him stand in the doorway, while she hid out of sight of the hallway inside the cell. Finally, she instructed her dad to lie face down on the mattress and pretend to be dead.

"Now, we're going to stay like this until somebody comes to check on what the shooting was about," she said. "And if you double-cross us, Johann –" She left the threat unfinished.

Nancy hoped that she looked calmer than she felt. Her heart was pounding and it turned her stomach to make threats and hold a gun on a fellow-human being, even one so despicable as Johann.

After a few seconds of being positioned like this, Johann smiled a little. Then he began to chuckle.

"I don't see anything funny about this," Nancy told him.

"You're wasting time," Johann replied. "No one's going to come to check out those shots. I was sent here to do some shooting, remember? Besides, this place is so sound-tight, I don't know that anyone even heard them."

Carson sat up. "Is that true?"

Johann shrugged. "You'll just have to take my word for it. Or not, and maybe lose so much time that you won't be able to get out of here."

"Maybe we'd better just take our chances and go, Nance," Carson suggested.

"Maybe," Nancy conceded, "but if we've got a few minutes that we can count on being alone with this guy, I've got some questions."

"You can ask, but I don't have to answer," Johann replied.

Nancy waited a moment and then fired her first question. "Are you just political extremists who think Europe would be better off without the European Union, or are you trying to take over all of Europe for yourselves?"

"What?" Carson asked, astonished at the question.

Johann also seemed discomfited. "So you really do know all about what we're doing."

"Quite a bit," Nancy said. "Answer the question."

Johann threw his head back and squared his shoulders. "We don't want Europe. We don't want Europe to exist. It's countries have caused more worldwide trouble than any other region of the world. We are going to destroy it."

Carson stared at him in horror. "You can't be serious. How did you know about this, Nancy?"

"They have a map in their laboratory with Brussels, Luxembourg, Strasbourg, and Frankfurt marked off on it," she replied. "Those are the cities where the principle institutions of the European Union." She turned back to Johann. "You're planning terrorist attacks on the European Union buildings in those countries. When are they scheduled and what means are you going to use?"

Johann shook his head. "No. I won't tell you that."

"That's where Michael comes into this, of course," Nancy continued. "His father is an official, probably at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. You must have kidnapped him to get leverage with his father, perhaps to try to get him to help you, or maybe just to make sure he didn't get in your way."

"I don't get it," Carson said. "How does this have anything to do with what's been going on with us?"

"Johann thought that I was in Oregon to investigate him," Nancy explained. "He was at the resort to meet these people's lawyer, Moore, who was at the conference. They needed a lawyer to make sure they didn't get investigated for their funds that they were collecting, chiefly through burglary and computer hacking, and were using to finance their terrorist operation. Johann made a few mistakes, though. First, he brought Michael along, which gave Michael too much free rein. Secondly, along with another of his cohorts, Jacqueline, he burglarized the hotel. Jacqueline had gotten herself hired as a housekeeper so she had a master keycard that allowed her into any room."

Johann's eyes narrowed. "You know a good deal too much, Ms. Drew. But it won't do you any good."

"Johann's the one behind all the stalking and even Jacqueline's murder," Nancy continued. "He's been trying to confuse me and distract me with so many red herrings that I wouldn't be able to focus on the main case. It might have worked, except that Michael managed to get several messages to me. You tried to steer me on the wrong track by having Jacqueline pose as M.H., but then you had her killed. Why?"

Johann shrugged. "She was helpful, but she was freelance. I couldn't trust her too far."

"Your hired stalkers and sniper are freelance, too," Nancy reminded him. "How can you trust them?"

"I couldn't." Johann scowled. "One's in jail in Bayport. The New York one is on the run, although he did his job good. He got your aunt, your boyfriend, and the other guy all holed up in protective custody, not able to help a bit. Then there was Gib. He really blew it. They might be finding his body washing up on the shore of a river, or they might not. Then there's the one in River Heights." A sinister smile crept over his face.

Nancy and Carson exchanged a nervous look, wondering what that smile meant. Nancy swallowed as she tried to decide exactly how to word her question.

Before she could, Carson asked it. "Only one in River Heights? He must be busy."

"Busier than you know," Johann replied. "I gave him the word to finish your friends there off."

Unconsciously, Nancy lowered the gun for a moment. It was only a few seconds before she gathered her wits enough to raise it again.

"We've wasted enough time already, Dad," she said. "We've got to get out of here and warn them."

"What are we going to do with him?" Carson asked, nodding at Johann.

"I tried tying him up once," Nancy told him. "We could try it again. If everyone is focused on looking for Michael and me and don't realize that you're gone, Dad, then maybe no one would find him for awhile."

"It's worth a try," Carson agreed.

They bound Johann's wrists and ankles and then gagged him with a make-shift handkerchief cut out from the sheet that had been covering the mattress. After they had made sure that he could barely make a sound and that the ropes were tied tightly enough that he would have a hard time getting away, Carson reloaded the other gun and they went out into the hallway.

They walked cautiously, pausing at every corner to make sure all was clear. Fortunately, the building was designed to have a lot of twists and turns in its halls, which meant that they didn't have to go very far without cover. Nancy slowly led the way back to the laboratory, thinking that there might be a floorplan of the building somewhere in all the notes and maps and paraphernalia that were lying around in there.

When they reached it, Nancy edged the door open just a crack and peered through. No one was inside the lab. Gesturing for her father to follow, she went inside.

When Carson saw the inside of the lab, he looked around in surprise. He hadn't expected such a well-equipped lab. There wasn't time to wonder at it, though. Immediately, he Nancy began examining the bulletin boards and the stacks of papers on the benches to try to find the floorplan.

After they had been searching for a few minutes, both began to feel nervous and jumpy. After all, in all probability, someone would be coming into the room sooner or later. They couldn't afford to risk staying in there much longer.

Just as she was about to suggest giving up and trying to find their way out without a floorplan, Nancy found what she was looking for. She waved Carson over and they examined the plan.

Apparently, the building was huge with three wings. There were also four stories, including a basement. Carson pointed out the laboratory on the plan, which was shown to be on the second floor. Evidently, they'd have to try to get to the first floor to get out. That could be tricky.

"What about Michael?" Nancy asked.

Carson bit his lip. They couldn't leave him behind, but on the other hand, they had no idea where to look for him. While they were both still mentally debating this with themselves, they heard footsteps approaching. Nancy quickly led her dad to the closet where she had hidden earlier and they crowded inside.

They heard one of the doors to the lab open and a couple of people walk in. The people stopped inside the lab. Nancy and Carson heard the sound of papers shuffling, and then the door opened again and someone else came inside.

"Well?" a woman's voice asked. Nancy thought it belonged to the woman who had come to question her in her cell. "Did you find them?"

"Not a trace," a man replied. "Unless Johann did. I haven't seen him since he went to finish off Drew."

There was a pause. "Is there any chance either of them could have escaped the building?" the woman asked.

"No way," the man assured her. "We've got people posted all around the building on the inside of the first floor and outside. No one could have gotten out without us seeing them."

"Good," the woman replied. "We don't know how much the Drew girl or her friends told the authorities. We can't take any chances. We'll have to burn this place and move out to our other spot."

"Burn it?" a different man repeated. "Won't we lose everything?"  
"We'll only be set back a few months," the woman told him. "We'll still accomplish our plans, if only later than we had originally hoped."

For a third time, the door burst open.

"Lennel!" another man said. "We've got trouble. I just found Johann here tied up in Drew's cell. Drew got away now, too."

The woman threw out some furious curses. Then she shouted, "You idiot! Can't you do anything right? This is it. You've blown all your chances."

"Hey! Wait!" Johann shouted, but he was silenced by a gunshot.


	18. Inferno

_Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who is reading, following, and most especially reviewing!_

Chapter XVIII: Inferno

Instinctively, Nancy edged a little closer to her father behind the safety of the closet door. She didn't have to be told what that gunshot had meant.

"What did you do that for, Lennel?" one of the men in the main laboratory asked.

"I should have done it before now," the woman replied. "That way, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. Get everybody out. We're going to have to burn this place to the ground, and then go separately to our other headquarters."

"C. Moore," the other man said.

"Right," the woman confirmed. "Let's go. And leave your guards outside the building. We don't want the Drews or the kid to escape the fire."

Several set of footsteps retreated from the room. Everything in the lab fell silent. Even so, Nancy and Carson stayed completely still, just in case one of the terrorists had stayed behind for some reason.

After they had waited a short time, though, Carson dared to look out through the door. "All clear," he told Nancy as he stepped out into the lab.

Nancy followed him and her gaze was drawn to Johann's lifeless body sprawled on the floor. Even though she had encountered a few murdered bodies in her investigations, the sight of one never failed to make her stomach churn and a pang of regret to go through her. Even though this man had been despicable – he had been a terrorist, had had two people murdered that she knew of, had kidnapped and abused a teenager for political reasons, had terrorized her friends and family, had intended to kill both her and her father, and had plotted to destroy an entire continent – she couldn't help feeling a little sorry that his wasted life had been ended in this way and now he didn't even have a chance to try to make amends for his crimes. Yet, thinking over Johann's crimes reminded Nancy of the last thing he had told her and her father. A wave of alarm enveloped her sense of pity.

"Dad, we still haven't warned Hannah and the others," she said.

"I know." Carson looked grim. "We're not going to have a chance to, either, until we get out of here. Any ideas?"

Nancy had to admit that she was at a loss on this one. They still had to find Michael, and then they had to find a way out of the building without being seen by the guards – and they were running out of time quickly. At the very least, the building would be emptying out, and so they would be able to move around more easily.

They headed out of the lab and began to carefully make their way through the hallways. The alarms were still blaring, but now the place was mostly deserted. After several minutes, the scent of smoke began to permeate the air.

"We'd better hurry," Carson said.

"Nancy. Mr. Drew." The voice came from a speaker attached to the wall.

"It's Michael." Nancy recognized the voice.

"I'm in the basement. I think I found a way out," Michael continued over the intercom.

"Come on," Carson said.

It didn't take them long to find the stairs. Unfortunately, they only led to the first floor and not to the basement. The smoke was thicker at their base.

Carson and Nancy began to cough and their eyes began to water as the smoke made it difficult to see anything. Afraid that they might get separated, they held onto each other's hands.

"Do you remember where the stairs to the basement are?" Carson asked.

Nancy shook her head and coughed. Then she pointed. "Let's try this way."

They made their way down the hall. As they went, they felt the doors on either side to see if they were hot. None of them were, but when they opened them, none of them concealed a staircase. When they'd gotten to the end of the hall with no success, they turned back.

Without warning, a beam fell thirty feet ahead of them, bringing with it a shower of embers and flame. Nancy held her arm up to shield her eyes and then turned to her father with a look that clearly asked, "What now?"

Carson pulled her back toward the door at the very end of the hall. They went through and Carson closed it behind him. The air was a little clearer in here. Carson pointed at a window on the opposite side of the room and tried to pull Nancy toward it. She planted her feet firmly and shook her head.

"What about Michael?" she asked. "And the guards?"

"Michael said he found a way out," Carson told her. "He'll take it. Maybe he already has. As for the guards, we'll just have to risk it."

He didn't take any more argument and pulled her along to the window. It opened easily, and Carson signaled Nancy to go ahead and climb through. She hesitated for a moment, but then she decided that her dad was right. There was really nothing else to be done.

She climbed through the window and landed in some bushes on the other side. For the first time, she saw that the building was out in the country, but somehow that didn't surprise. She'd had the impression all along that there weren't too many neighbors.

Carson followed her a moment later. For a few seconds, they stayed close to the side of the building, choking on the smoke, while they looked around to see if they could spot the guards who were supposed to be around. No one was in sight, so they decided to risk making a dash for a nearby stand of trees. They were not stopped.

When they reached it, Nancy sank down to a sitting position on the ground and looked back at the flames that were visible in most of the first-floor windows. They had been lucky to escape.

"I hope Michael got out," Nancy said aloud.

Carson coughed before he replied, "I'm sure he did. If he had a way out, he wouldn't have just stayed in there until it was too late."

Nancy didn't say anything in response, but she had some doubts. Michael had said that he _thought_ he had a way out. What if he'd been wrong? Nancy gritted her teeth. She didn't like not being sure.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a German-accented voice calling out, "Nancy! Mr. Drew! You made it!"

Both Carson and Nancy turned to look and saw Michael running toward them, his clothes and face smeared with ashes.

"Thank goodness," Nancy said, as she ran to meet him. "We were afraid you were trapped."

"I tried to call you over the – the –" He paused, looking frustrated that he couldn't think of the word. Then he shook his head and went on. "I wanted to tell you that there was a way out in the basement. The roof fell before you came and I had to leave."

"It's a good thing you did," Carson assured him. "We got out through one of the windows?"  
Michael looked puzzled. "But the men – didn't they stop you?"

"I've been wondering about that, too." Nancy looked uneasily over her shoulder. "The guards might have left, but that seems strange. Maybe we should keep our voices down."

"More than that, we should get out of here," Carson said. "Even if there aren't any guards around, that fire might spread to the trees around here."

"Besides, we need to get to a phone and warn everyone at home as soon as possible," Nancy added.

They carefully made their way around the building until they came to the road leading in. To their relief, they saw that it was lined on both sides by trees, so they could follow along beside it without being spotted.

The road, as it turned out, went for a long distance without meeting any other roads or highways. By the time they had walked for nearly an hour, all three of them were exhausted. Michael wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, smearing the soot on his face even more.

"Can we stop?" he asked.

Nancy looked at her father. She wanted to hurry on as fast as she could.

Carson put his hand on Michael's shoulder. "We can rest for a few minutes."

"But we have to warn the others," Nancy insisted.

Carson sighed. "I know, Nancy, but we can only do so much. We'll get to a phone in enough time."

Just then, they heard the sound of sirens coming toward them. The sudden hope of rescue made them all forget their weariness and dash toward the road. A few seconds later, they saw several firetrucks with a police car at the head approaching. All three of them began waving their arms, and the police car pulled over to the side of the road as the engines continued on. The Drews and Michael hurried to its side.

"What's going on?" an officer asked, getting out of his car from the driver's side.

The passenger door also opened and another officer got out. "Do you know something about the fire? You look like you do."  
"Yeah," Carson told him. "We've actually got one heck of a story to tell you."

"But right now, we need to get a hold of some friends of ours," Nancy interjected. "They might be killed if we don't."

The officers looked startled and, without questioning it, the driver handed a cell phone to Nancy.

"There should be reception here," he said. Then he turned to Carson. "While she's making her call, how about you get started on your story?"

Nancy immediately dialed her home number, but there was no answer there. Hannah was one of the few people left without a cell phone, so that meant that there was no way to get hold of her directly. Next, Nancy dialed Bess's cell phone and then George's, but neither girl answered.

"No answer?" Carson asked, interrupting his story.

Nancy shook her head, a sick feeling in her stomach. She would have tried Dave's number, but she didn't have it memorized. Not knowing what else to do, she dialed Ned's phone.

"Hello?" Ned's voice came over the phone a few moments later. He sounded tired and worried. Oh, but it was good to hear his voice! Nancy felt her eyes get a little watery at the relief.

"Ned –" she started to say, but he interrupted.

"Nancy? You're all right? I've been worried sick! What happened? Where are you?"

"I'm fine," Nancy assured him. "Ned, have you heard from Bess or George or Dave recently? I can't get hold of them and their stalker has been ordered to kill them."

"They're fine, Nancy," Ned told her. "Someone did try to kill them, but he didn't succeed and he's in jail now."

Nancy let out her breath as a wave of relief passed over her. "Then you're all safe. Thank goodness."

"But what about you?" Ned asked. "We heard you and your dad had been kidnapped."

"We were," Nancy said. "We got away. It's a long story. I'll have to tell you about it later. Right now, we've got to tell it to the police and then probably half a dozen other agencies. I'll call you back later, okay? Oh, and could you call the others and tell them that we're all right?"

"Sure thing," Ned replied. "I'm so glad you're okay. And, Nancy – I love you."

Nancy couldn't help but smile. "I love you, too. I'll talk to you later."

As soon as the two officers understood what had taken place, they immediately began contacting different agencies.

"You don't know where this other hideout of theirs is?" one of them asked.

"They mentioned the name of that lawyer again," Carson replied. "Moore. Maybe he's got a place where he's hiding them."

"It could be," the policeman agreed.

"No," Nancy said. "I don't think so. They didn't say 'Moore'; they said 'C. Moore'. I have a hunch about what they meant. I'll need to see some maps of Oregon and Washington, though."


	19. Seymour

_Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading, following, and reviewing! Your support means a lot to me!_

Chapter XIX: Seymour

"This must be it." Nancy was in the police headquarters of the town of Grassl, Washington with her dad, Michael Hertz, and several police officers. They were gathered around a desk with large maps of the states of Washington and Oregon spread over them. Nancy had her finger placed on a dot on the Oregon one labeled "Seymour".

"Seymour," a police lieutenant read. "That could be what they meant instead of the lawyer, but how do you know?"

"Michael, you said that you heard them mention the words 'see more' several times," Nancy reminded the boy. "Couldn't it have meant the town of Seymour instead?"  
"Yes." Michael glanced around at the adults who were all looking at him. "It makes sense. Johann said one time that he should go to Seymour. I did not know what it meant, but if it is a town, then –"

"Okay," the lieutenant agreed, "but there are other cities in the U.S. named Seymour. How can we be sure that this is the one?"

"Their operations seem fairly localized," Nancy told him. "Besides, we might as well start by looking in the closest one."

"True," the lieutenant conceded. "We'll alert the FBI about this, as well as the police departments in all the Seymours in the US. You're all going to have to get asked a lot more questions, but before we get started on that, why don't you all go get cleaned up, get some food, and get some rest?"

It took no convincing to get Nancy, Carson, and Michael to go along with that suggestion. A few hours later, the FBI had arrived and meticulously began taking down their statements.

Nancy was just getting close to finishing hers, when the phone belonged to the agent questioning her rang. The agent asked her to wait for a minute while she answered the call. The person on the other end of the line did most of the talking and whatever they were saying seemed to please the FBI agent immensely.

"We'll have them there," the agent said finally and hung up. She looked up at Nancy. "Looks like your hunch paid off. Our team in Seymour just caught some people answering your descriptions of the suspects. I told them we'd bring you, your father, and Michael Hertz down there to identify them."

"Great," Nancy said. "I just hope they caught them all."

***ND***

It was early the next day when Carson, Nancy, and Michael arrived at the Seymour police headquarters. They'd been allowed to sleep most of the way, but the excitement and stress of the last few days were still taking their toll.

"You can wait here while we get the suspects ready," an FBI agent told them, showing them a waiting room with comfortable chairs.

Michael yawned as he sat down. When he and the Drews were alone, he commented, "I wish they would let me go home. It has been almost a month since I saw my parents."

Nancy gave him an encouraging smile. "Don't worry. You'll be home soon."

Michael rested his head on one fist. "You say that these people are terrorists and they wanted to destroy Europe?"

"That's right," Nancy told him.

"They could not do it," Michael said with certainty. "Why be so afraid of them? Isn't that what they want?"

"Yes, it is," Carson replied. "And no, they wouldn't be able to destroy Europe. But they would try if we let them, and people would get hurt."

Michael sighed. "At least they cannot do that now."

The door opened and an agent walked in. "We're ready now. You'll need to come in one at a time. How about you come first, Ms. Drew?"

Nancy followed her to a room where the suspects were lined up behind a glass wall so that they couldn't hear what Nancy or the agent were saying. Nancy looked them over carefully, one at a time.

Finally, she looked back at the agent. "I can identify that man who's second from the left and the one that's three down from him. I don't know their names, but they were definitely there. I didn't see any of the others."

The agent nodded. "That's pretty good. Naturally, you wouldn't have seen all of them. We should be able to get enough evidence on the others without a positive eye witness. Then again, there's always the possibility that your father or Michael will recognize the others."

"There's one problem, though," Nancy said. "You're still missing one of them. There was a woman who seemed to be the head of the whole operation. I overheard the others call her Lennel."

The agent muttered under her breath. "Okay," she said out loud. "We'll just have to track this Lennel down. Maybe one of her people can tell us something. We also sent some of our people to pick up Moore in Seattle. He might be able to help, too."

Nancy nodded. She didn't say it out loud, but she was thinking that maybe she could learn something about Lennel's whereabouts herself.

That evening, the FBI finally let Carson and Nancy go their own way. When Michael begged to be allowed to go with them, they reluctantly let the Drews take him for the night.

"What are we going to do?" Michael asked. "Can we go to a movie?"

"Um, sure, why not?" Carson replied. "First, let's get some supper, though. I could use some decent food."

They found a restaurant and ordered their supper. The meal was delicious, but Nancy barely said a word during it. Her mind was still furiously running over everything she had seen and heard in the terrorists' headquarters, trying to remember something that would tell her where Lennel was.

After supper, Michael still wanted to go to a movie. The theater in the town was small with only one screen. The only movie playing was, to Michael's excitement, a superhero film. Ordinarily, Nancy wouldn't have had any objection to watching it and probably would have enjoyed it, but right now she was too focused on the case.

Two hours after the movie had started, the end credits began to roll. The Drews, Michael, and a swarm of other people began slowly making their way out of the theater.

"We will not have that movie in Germany for two months," Michael commented. "It is very good. Did you like it, Nancy?"

"Oh. Yeah," Nancy replied absently. Then she realized that this was the first fun thing Michael had gotten to do in a month and thought she should be a little more enthusiastic about it. "Yeah. It was really good. I really liked the part where –"

She was interrupted by a woman jostling her arm. Nancy glanced at her and their eyes met. Both gasped in surprise and dismay.

"Lennel!" Nancy instinctively made a grab at the woman's wrist, but she pulled back.

"You've ruined everything," the woman said, reaching into a purse that she was carrying. She pulled a gun out. "Now you'll pay for it."

The other people in the theater saw what was happening and began to scream and run for the exit. Carson pulled Nancy behind him.

"This is crazy," he said. "You'll never get out of here. Why make things harder on yourself?"

"This won't make any difference to what they'll do when they catch me," Lennel replied. "Even if it did, I don't care. I was almost ready, and then you three and that idiot Johann destroyed everything I built up. I'll never be able to rebuild it now. The only thing left for me is to see you pay."

"But you could have run when you had the chance," Carson pointed out.

Nancy knew he was trying to stall, but she immediately remembered what had happened to Johann. There wasn't much chance that Lennel would hesitate to shoot anymore this time than she had then. There had to be a way to stop her.

Michael was hanging in the background, watching the scene nervously. After watching all the heroics in the action-packed movie he had just seen, he was feeling braver than he had in the past month. Biting his lip, he began preparing himself to make a move.

Suddenly, all the lights went down and the room was plunged into darkness. The four people left in the room jumped in surprise. Nancy made a dash to get into a different position. As she did, there was a loud gunshot and a flash of light from the muzzle. Nancy's heart sank as she heard a groan that was unmistakably from her father.

A moment later, there was a crash of bodies falling to the floor. Lennel shrieked. Michael must have tackled her! Nancy could hear them struggling on the floor. At once, she went straight toward the sound.

One of the two struggling people hit her in the mouth and Nancy tasted blood from a split lip. In that second, she grabbed hold of the flailing wrist. A bracelet on it told her that it couldn't be Michael, so it had to be Lennel's. Nancy pinned it down on the floor. With Nancy's help, Michael soon had Lennel's other arm pinned.

"Where's the gun?" Nancy asked.

"I – she does not have it," Michael replied.

"She must have dropped it when you tackled her," Nancy concluded.

Just then, the lights came back on, revealing two uniformed police officers standing in the entrance with their guns aimed in the general direction of the skirmish.

"Freeze!" one of them shouted.

Nancy and Michael, while still holding Lennel down, did as they were told.

"It's all right," Nancy told the officers. "We've got her."

As the officers cautiously came forward to make sure it really was all right, Nancy glanced over at her father. Carson was sitting on the floor, holding his left hand over his right arm with a pale, pained face.

"Dad!" she gasped.

Carson managed to muster a smile. "I'm okay. It just nicked me."

It only took a few moments for the officers to ascertain that Lennel was the aggressor and place handcuffs to her. At once, Nancy and Michael hurried to Carson's side. Nancy gently pulled her father's hand away from the wound. There was blood, but she could see that her father's assessment was right.

"We'll call an ambulance right away," one of the officers told them.

"That woman is one of the terrorists the FBI is looking for," Nancy said.

"That so?" the other officer replied. "What was she doing here?"

"You'll regret this!" Lennel burst out. "You'll pay. If not today, then someday."

"Revenge, huh," the policeman said. "Well, someday will be a long way away. You folks aren't going to have to worry about her anymore."


	20. A Plot Foiled

_Author's Note: Thank you all so much for reading and following. I'd like to especially thank Cherylann Rivers, TinDog, ulstergirl, and Maria for your reviews. Each and every one is greatly appreciated!_

Chapter XX: A Plot Foiled

An official from the German embassy stood by in the Seattle airport while Michael Hertz said goodbye to the Drews.

"I do not know what to say, really," Michael said, looking at the floor. "I am glad to go home, but –"

Nancy smiled and hugged him. "We didn't get to know you very well, but we'll miss you. After all, you saved our lives when you tackled Lennel."

Michael blushed. "I could not have done it without your help, Nancy. And you saved my life, too, from the terrorists."

Carson gave him a one-handed hug, since his right arm was in a sling. "I'd like to thank you, too. How long will it be before you can go home?"

Michael looked over at the embassy official. "I will have to stay in the embassy for some time until the paperwork is done. I am not in the country legal. But I should go home in a week or so."

"Good," Carson said. "And if you're ever in the U.S. again – by your own choice this time – you can always come and visit us in River Heights."

"I will do that," Michael replied.

After saying a few last goodbyes, the official led Michael away to his plane that would take him to Washington, D.C. and the Drews went to find their own gate for their flight to River Heights. They were a good deal early, and so they sat down to wait.

Carson leaned back in his chair and chuckled. "Some vacation this turned out to be."

Nancy grinned at him. "When have we had a vacation that didn't turn out this way?"

"Well, terrorists are a little different than what you usually tackle," Carson replied. "Anyway, I'm glad it's over and everything worked out."

"No kidding," Nancy said. "I think maybe next time we want some R and R, we should just stay home."

"As if that will keep you from finding another mystery," Carson responded.

Nancy just smiled and didn't say anything. Her dad was right. No matter what she did, she always ran into some mystery or other and would probably find one before too much time had passed.

The track phone in Nancy's purse rang. She and Carson had bought one to use on their way home and until they could get new phones, since theirs hadn't been recovered and had probably been destroyed in the fire. She looked at the number and grinned as she immediately recognized it.

"Hi, Frank," she said.

"Hey, Nance," Frank Hardy's voice came over the phone.

A moment later, Joe added, "I'm here, too. We wanted to congratulate you on a case well-solved."

Nancy laughed. "Thanks, guys. How did you get this number?"

"My superior detective skills again," Joe replied.

"Ned gave it to us," Frank told Nancy. "He filled us in on how the case turned."

"Sounds like you cut it pretty close," Joe added. "I wish I could have been there to see you hold a gun on that guy. I never knew you were that cool. I mean, I knew you were cool, but –"

"Yeah, I get it," Nancy interrupted him. "Why weren't you there? You must have had some idea what was going on, and you know our agreement."

"We don't get involved in each other's cases unless we're asked or someone mysteriously vanishes," Joe replied.

"We know, Joe," Frank said. "We were all set to come out and look for you, Nance. We couldn't get tickets until after you'd turned up again, though, and Dad's plane is –"

"Sunk," Joe interrupted. "It was thanks to us, too."

There was a few more minutes of conversation, and then the Hardys said that they had to go. Nancy sighed as she put the phone in her purse.

"You okay?" Carson asked her.

"Yeah," Nancy said. "It's just been some case. I'm glad it all turned out fine."

***ND***

There was an excited reunion at the River Heights airport. Ned and Burt had gotten back about an hour before Nancy and Carson's plane came in, and so they were waiting there, along with Hannah, the Faynes, and the Marvins. There was a great deal of hugging all around, and Ned greeted Nancy with a kiss.

After it had died down a bit, Nancy said seriously, "Guys, I'm really sorry I put all of you through this. I can't even imagine how terrible it must have been for you."

"Yeah, right," George replied. "You had it way worse off than any of us did."

Bess shivered a little. "I wouldn't want to have to live through the last few days again too bad. But really, Nancy, the worst part was when you and your dad were kidnapped and we didn't know what had happened and we couldn't do anything about it."

"So let me get this all straight," Dave said. "There were a bunch of terrorists plotting to destroy the European Union and plunge Europe into complete confusion throughout the continent. What does that have to do with a burglary in Oregon?"

"From what I understand," Nancy replied, "that woman, Lennel, was the brains behind the whole thing. Johann was in charge of raising money to fund the terrorism. The main way he did that was by commissioning criminals like Jacqueline to steal valuables. They were willing to do it because they still got a cut and they didn't have to sell what they stole themselves."

"But why did Johann have Mand – er, Jacqueline murdered?" Burt asked.

Nancy shrugged. "It worked out for the other part of Johann's job. You see, he was also supposed to kidnap Michael, whose father is an official of the European Central Bank, one of the terrorists' targets. They hoped to get his help with this leverage. However, when Johann got careless and let Michael get a message out with his initials, he had to find another M.H. He got Jacqueline to pose as M.H., but he must have thought that her story would be more convincing if she died, not to mention that it would put me at a dead end."

"I guess that makes sense," Burt said. "I just don't get why Johann made such a bold move against you before you had every done anything."

"He was paranoid," Nancy explained. "Some of the other terrorists who were captured in Seymour admitted that."

"Speaking of Seymour, what did that mean, anyway?" Ned asked. "Did it mean the lawyer, C. Moore, or the town, Seymour?"

"Both," Nancy replied. "Whether it was a coincidence that 'see more' had a double meaning or not isn't very clear, but it seems to be a password of some sort with the terrorists. That's how Michael happened to overhear it."

Bess nodded. "Well, I guess that's that. I'm glad it's over. Next time you find a mystery, make sure there aren't any snipers or terrorists involved."

Nancy laughed. "Sure thing. I'll do my best."

George rolled her eyes. "As if. If there aren't snipers or terrorists, there will be something else just as dangerous. Nancy's practically a magnet to danger."

"At least she always manages to get out of it," Bess said.

 _Author's Note: Thank you all so much for reading_ The Lost Message. _I hope you've enjoyed it. I have another story coming up, although this one will be about the Hardy Boys. I'll begin posting it at about the end of June._


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